Bill Gates and Blackrock Do Not Own the Majority of Farmland and Single-family Homes in the US
The Claim
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates owns the majority of U.S. farmland and BlackRock owns the majority of U.S. single-family houses.
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Emerging story
Social media users are sharing claims about how much land Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and BlackRock, the American multinational investment management corporation, own. According to the claims, while Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates owns the majority of U.S. farmland, BlackRock owns the majority of U.S. single-family houses.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar investigated the circulating claim and found it to be misleading. Bill Gates is the largest private farmland owner in the United States, but he does not own the vast majority of farmland. BlackRock does not own a majority of single-family homes in the United States, despite being the world's largest asset management firm.
Bill Gates Farmland Assets
Despite owning more than 240,000 acres of farmland across the country and being the country's largest private farmland owner, Bill Gates owns only a small portion of the country's nearly 900 million acres of agricultural land.
According to a Forbes article published in January 2021, Gates has been quietly amassing up to 242,000 acres of farmlands, “enough to make him the top private farmland owner in America.” The Land Report, a land ownership magazine in the United States, confirms the figure.
Photo Description: Top farmland owners in the U.S. in 2020 according to LandReport.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), there were 895,300,000 acres of farmland in the U.S. back in 2021, nearly 900 million acres.
Gates, therefore, owns around 0.027% of U.S. farmland.
BlackRock Ownership of Single-Family Homes
Providing investment, advisory, and risk management solutions, BlackRock is one of the world's leading investment firms. Despite its success, BlackRock does not own the majority of U.S. single-family houses and is not the top owner of Single-Family homes in the U.S.
Misbar’s team found that the top owner of Single-family homes in the U.S. is Invitation Homes. According to Yahoo Finance, the company owns “82,758 single-family rental homes as of the end of the first quarter this year.” BlackRock holds shares in the company. According to the Latest Disclosed Ownership, BlackRock owns 50,992,689 shares in Invitations homes, around 8.50% of the shares.
BlackRock addressed the misleading news via a tweet saying: “We’ve never been one of the big institutional buyers of single-family homes.”
The claims are re-circulating in light of Elon Musk’s recent Twitter buyout for $44bn.
Based on these findings, Misbar concludes that the claims are misleading.
