Who Owns This County
See who holds the land, and where they live
Overview
Who Owns This County classifies every parcel in a county by the kind of owner behind it — person, trust, company, government — and whether that owner is local, in-state, or absentee. It then ranks the largest landholders so you can see who controls the most land.
How to use
Pick a county
Search for any US county with parcel data using the county picker.
Read the choropleth
Census tracts are shaded by the selected ownership metric — absentee percentage, out-of-state percentage, or company-held percentage. Switch metrics using the toggle.
Browse largest landholders
The ranked list shows the top owners by acreage or parcel count. Toggle to include or exclude government holdings.
Inspect a tract
Click any tract to see a detailed ownership breakdown — local vs. absentee, owner class distribution, and residency stats.
See where owners live
The "owned from" bar chart shows which states absentee owners mail from.
Owner classification
Owner type is inferred from the owner name field using pattern matching: trusts, LLCs, corporations, government entities, and individual persons. Residency is determined by comparing the owner mailing address to the parcel location — same town, elsewhere in state, out of state, or no address filed.
Data layers
Parcel boundaries, owner names, mailing addresses, acreage, and assessed value from the nationwide parcel layer.
Census tract boundaries used to aggregate ownership statistics and render the choropleth map.
Limitations
Owner name coverage varies by county. Some counties report only one owner field; others report multiple. Grouping parcels by owner relies on name normalization, which may miss entities held under variant names or multiple LLCs.