Slow home sales are creating accidental landlords

A lack of buyers in the market has pushed a near-record share of homeowners to rent out their properties, industry data shows.

Units owned by "accidental landlords" accounted for 2.3% of the listed rental stock in October, according to research from Zillow. That's more than any share in Zillow's nearly six-year record, outside of November 2022 when it was 2.4%.

"As the market continues to rebalance, sellers are facing a different reality than they did a few years ago," said Kara Ng, senior economist at Zillow, in a press release Tuesday. "Bargaining power is tilting toward buyers and homes are taking longer to sell, making renting out a property one way to buy time rather than compete aggressively on price. After all, today's sellers are rarely forced to sell, and it appears they are often unwilling to budge off of what their heart says their home is worth."

Homebuying power hit a four-year high in January, in large part due to lower mortgage rates and slowed demand, Zillow previously reported. There were an estimated 44%, or 600,000, more home sellers than buyers in the housing market two months ago, up from 30% more a year prior, according to Redfin.

When the record was set in November 2022, mortgage rates had more than doubled since the start of the year, jumping from 3.11% to 7.08% by the end of October, which sent sellers scrambling to adjust. Mortgage rates decreased from nearly 7% to 6.17% by the end of October last year, as the trend was more of a choice than shock-driven this time, the release said.

The metric is seasonal and typically peaks in November, when would-be sellers lose hope at the end of the home buying season, according to the report.

Where were the highest shares of accidental landlords?

Markets that were more buyer-friendly and had less competition tended to post a higher share of accidental landlords, the report said.

Denver led all metros analyzed with a 4.9% share, followed by three cities in Texas, Houston (4.2%), Austin (4.1%) and San Antonio (3.9%), while Dallas (3.4%) cracked the top 10 as well. Three Florida cities, Tampa (3.7%), Miami (3.5%) and Jacksonville (3.3%), also made the list.

Conversely, metros with the lowest share of for-sale homes turned rentals were in places with a fair amount of buyer competition. Eight of the bottom-10 metros for accidental landlords were on Zillow's list of the hottest housing markets in 2026, including Providence, Rhode Island (0.6%), Boston (0.6%) and New York (0.7%), the report showed.

Detached single-family homes were the most common property type owned by an accidental landlord, as 3.4% of single-family homes listed for rent on Zillow were owned by accidental landlords, compared with 2.2% for townhomes and 1.1% for condos.