The Ownership Record lists local companies in the trades, serving homes, businesses or both, that are owned by an outside group, such as a private-equity-backed company, an investment firm or a public company, and that still trade under their own local name. It states who owns what, with the source. It does not rate anyone.
What counts as investor-owned
An outside group, meaning an investment firm, private-equity fund, family office or public company, owns 49% or more of the company, directly or through a holding company.
Owned by a corporation. Some local companies are owned by a larger company that is not an investment firm: a privately held company, or a company its employees own. Their pages say “Private company” or “Employee-owned company” where an investment firm would be named. The proof is the same as for everything else: the owner’s own page, a press release, or a public record must name the company.
A holding company on its own does not make a business investor-owned. We look at who owns the holding company. If the people who own it are the people who run the business, it is owner-operated. Individual partners, even silent ones, do not change that.
What counts as a source
A company is added only when a page or record we have opened and read names it as the owner's. Four kinds count:
- The owner's own website. A page where the owner lists its brands, companies or locations.
- An announcement. A press release or news page from the owner, or from the investment firm behind it, that names the company.
- A published report. A trade-press article or press-wire release that names both the buyer and the company.
- A public record. A government record can be the source on its own when it names the owner by its legal name and the company’s name and town match. A “doing business as” record counts only when the owner’s company is the legal name. A holding company whose name doesn’t include the owner’s is never enough by itself.
A company with no website of its own is listed when a page we can read names both the buyer and the company, the company’s town comes from the company or the buyer themselves or from an official record such as a state registry or license lookup, and nothing suggests it could be confused with a similarly named company. Its page says we have no website on record.
Someone else's list, a ranking, a search result or a tip is a lead. It is not a source. Each company's page links its source and shows the date it was checked. About 40 of the earliest entries do not carry a link yet.
What the wording on a page means
Every entry uses one of these phrases. The shares are as of October 2026.
- “Owned by” (about 90% of entries): a source we read names the company as the owner's.
- “50% owned by” (or another figure): the group owns part of the company, 49% or more, and the source gives the share. We never round it up to “owned by”.
- “Reported as investor-owned, not yet independently confirmed” (about 8%): the only source is a list of deals compiled by someone else, or a report we could not confirm against the owner's own material.
- “Linked to” (about 2%): no announcement was found. The company's website shares a technical link with the owner's that anyone can check. The page says exactly what was found and never says “owned by”.
- “Investor-backed, control not shown”: a page we read, on the investor's own site or the group's own site, names an outside investor in the company, but no source we can read shows that the investor controls it. These companies are counted apart from the investor-owned total and are never described as owned. If a source later shows control, the entry moves to “owned by”. If the owner shows us they still control the company, the page says so.
Other things that appear on a company's page:
- “Ownership disclosed?” “Yes” means the owner is named on the company's own website. “No” means we found no mention of the owner on the company's home or about pages on the date shown. It may be named somewhere else on the site.
- A stock ticker after the owner's name. The owner is a publicly traded company, owned by its shareholders, not a private-equity group.
- “Serves”: homes, businesses, or both, taken from the company’s own website.
What we leave off
- Franchise locations owned by a local franchisee. The brand may belong to an investor-owned franchisor, but the location belongs to the person who runs it. A franchise territory is listed only when the company operating it is itself investor-owned and its own material names that territory.
- National brands. Franchise locations run by the franchisor itself, and companies that sell under one national name. The record is for local companies that kept their own names.
- Companies renamed into their owner's brand. There is no local name left to look up.
- Stakes under 49%. If a source says a firm owns less than 49%, the company stays off the investor-owned record. When the investor's own page names the company, it is listed as investor-backed with a minority stake: the page says the founders keep control, and it is counted apart. A deal described only as an investment or a partnership, with no figure, is not called ownership either: when the investor's or the group's own page names the company, it is listed as investor-backed, control not shown, and counted apart.
- Anything we cannot open and read. If the page that names the owner refuses our reader, we do not work around it: the company is left out and the reason is logged. If only the company’s own website refuses, the company can still be listed from a page we could read, and its page says the website was not checked.
How the record stays current
- Every day an automated search looks for news of acquisitions involving the owners on the record and the trades we cover.
- Every week each owner's own list of brands, where it publishes one, is read again and compared with the record.
- Trade by trade we research owners we have not covered yet.
Most of this checking is done by software built for the job. Before anything is published, it opens the page the entry cites and confirms the company is named there. Nothing is added straight from a search result. New entries appear on the updates page.
What the record cannot tell you
- It is not complete. A company that is not on the record has not been checked. That is different from being confirmed as independent.
- It says nothing about quality or price. Ownership does not tell you how good a company's work is or what it charges. It tells you who the company answers to.
- It can be behind. A company can be sold again, renamed or closed, and stay on the record until the next re-read catches it. Each page shows the date it was last checked.
- Dates are often missing. An acquisition date is shown only where the source gives one. About a third of entries have one.
If you know of a company we have missed, tell us. Tips are checked the same way as everything else.
Parity Verified contractors
The directory is separate from the record. A contractor marked Parity Verified has been confirmed by Parity as independently owned. The listing then shows which further checks are done: the license checked with the authority that issued it, the Parity standards signed by the owner, and an introduction from the owner: a short video, or a photo. If the business is sold to outside investors, the badge is removed and the listing goes back to unverified.
Listings marked “not yet verified” are built from public information. We have not checked who owns them.
If we got something wrong
Any business named on Parity can contest its entry. See Corrections & right of reply for how to do that and what happens next.