Lessors of non-residential buildings (except mini-warehouses)
This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in owning, or owning and operating, non-residential buildings. These establishments may operate (lease, administer and maintain) their properties on own account, or they may subcontract the operation to a third party, and they may provide additional services, such as security, maintenance, parking, and snow and trash removal. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 9,969
- Under 10 employeesA
- 89%
- Establishments · USA
- 34,567
- Employment · USA
- 172,451
- Payroll · USA
- $14.0B
Size and shape
How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.
Canadian establishments by number of employeesA
Of 9,969 Canadian establishments with employees, 89% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.
Where they areA
Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 531, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.
Owning is a capital business. Managing and brokering are service businesses with low capital — and low barriers, which is why they are crowded.
- Who sets the price
- Local rents, cap rates and interest rates.
- The software it runs on
- Property management and accounting, transaction management, listing platforms.
Market screens and studies
Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.
Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 5311 Lessors of real estate covers it.
Canada has committed unprecedented capital to non-market housing and handed the application process to a sector that cannot use it: roughly half of all community housing units sit with several thousand providers holding fewer than 100 units each, and almost none of them employ a developer. The enterable business is the missing capability, not the building — but the federal window that paid providers to buy that capability closed on 2 February 2026, and until a successor opens, the buyer has the need and not the budget.
The asset class has stopped compounding organically at the top, which is the number a new entrant should look at before a cap rate. Public Storage's same-store revenue was flat in 2025 — $3,765M against $3,764M — and same-store NOI fell 0.5% after falling 1.7% the year before. StorageVault's headline 10% growth is acquisition-driven; its same-store line was 4.1%. Buying at pricing that still assumes rent growth, against operators with national marketing spend and revenue-management systems, means paying for compounding that is not currently happening.
One private-equity roll-up already owns the stack. Storable was assembled by Cove Hill Partners from 2018 — SpareFoot and SiteLink in March 2018, storEDGE in August 2018, Select Merchant Solutions in April 2019 [B] — and EQT bought a majority in a deal announced December 2020 that valued it at roughly $2B including debt [B]. It now sells three management systems (Storable Edge, Sitelink, Storable Easy), the SpareFoot marketplace, payment processing, tenant insurance (Bader, Storsmart), call-centre and auction tools, and claims more than 33,000 facilities [C, vendor]. That is the payments-and-insurance attach model the salon, fitness and pet records found: the licence is the cheap part, and the money is in card volume and tenant protection riding on every move-in. The open challenger slot has just been funded. Cubby, founded 2022, raised a $63M Series A led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives in January 2026 and claims 400+ operators and 2,000+ facilities [B; counts C]. Tenant Inc. (Hummingbird) has raised about $37M, mostly from 100+ storage owners who use it [B]. Yardi sells Breeze Self Storage to small portfolios and its Self Storage Suite to large ones [B]. OpenTech Alliance owns the gate, kiosk and lien-auction layer (INSOMNIAC, StorageTreasures) [B]. A new entrant would face a $2B incumbent that owns payments and insurance, a Goldman-backed AI-native challenger, and Yardi. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor is private or inside a private parent, so no revenue floor can be built.
Software serving this industry
The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.
No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Property management and accounting, transaction management, listing platforms.
And what every business buys · 25 generic categories
Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.
Who works here
The occupations employed in Real estate and rental and leasing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Concentrated in this sectorA
These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.
And the jobs every business has
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 89% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.
Inside this industry
1 row sits directly beneath 53112. Each has a base report of its own.
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 531120 | Lessors of non-residential buildings (except mini-warehouses) | 9,969 | screened at 5311 |
Alongside it, under 5311 Lessors of real estate
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 53111 | Lessors of residential buildings and dwellings | 18,024 | Affordable & Social Housing Development |
| 53113 | Self-storage mini-warehouses | 556 | Self-Storage Development & AcquisitionSelf-Storage Management Software |
| 53119 | Lessors of other real estate property | 1,675 | screened at 5311 |