Other Similar Organizations (except Business, Professional, Labor, and Political Organizations) — NAICS 81399

A NAICS industry (5-digit) roll-up. NAICS is the North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard for classifying businesses by activity.

1. Overview

NAICS code 81399 is a residual, catch-all category for member-serving organizations that do not fit any other membership class — chiefly community associations (the homeowners' associations, or HOAs, condominium associations, and property-owners' associations that govern roughly a third of U.S. housing) plus athletic governing bodies and leagues (the NCAA — National Collegiate Athletic Association — Little League International, the AAU — Amateur Athletic Union — and similar), with a long tail of tenants' cooperatives and other mutual-benefit groups.[1]

The key fact for an investor is that almost none of these organizations are themselves for-profit or investable: they are non-profit, mutual-benefit, member-governed entities that exist to break even on member dues and assessments, with no equity to buy. Yet they sit atop enormous, recurring, largely non-cyclical cash flows — U.S. HOAs alone collected an estimated $120.9 billion in assessments in 2024 — that fund a real, investable ecosystem of service providers: community-management firms, specialty HOA banks, and management-software vendors. You buy the "picks and shovels," not the associations.[1]

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

At the 5-digit level, NAICS 81399 contains exactly one 6-digit child industry:

• 813990 — Other Similar Organizations (except Business, Professional, Labor, and Political Organizations)

Because there is only one child, this 5-digit industry is economically identical to 813990 — the definition, the illustrative examples (condo/homeowners' and property-owners' associations; cooperative owners' and tenants' associations; athletic associations and leagues acting as governing bodies), the exclusions (places of worship → 813110; grantmaking/charity → 813210; social advocacy → 813310; civic/social clubs → 813410; property management on owners' behalf → real estate NAICS 531; recreation facilities and pro sports teams → 713990/711211), and every federal statistic below are the same at both levels.[1] This page is a short summary; for the full detail — investable names, tax mechanics, regulation, and risks — read the 813990 primer.

3. How big it is (this level's figures)

Federal business statistics for NAICS 81399 (our ground-truth figures; identical to the single child):

Concentration is almost nonexistent: the top 4 firms hold just 12.8% of receipts, the top 50 only 37.3%, and the HHI (a standard concentration gauge where 10,000 is a pure monopoly) is 69.3 — one of the lowest readings in any industry. That reflects thousands of tiny, independent, single-location legal entities.[2]

Undercount caveat — read before quoting the $34.9 billion. The Economic Census and County Business Patterns count only businesses with paid employees; Census's nonemployer program excludes non-profits entirely. The defining feature of this sector is that most of its organizations have no employees — the Foundation for Community Association Research counts roughly 373,000 U.S. community associations housing about 78 million people (nearly a third of the housing stock), yet only ~18,140 establishments here carry any payroll.[3] Volunteer-run boards and government-owned entities never appear, and associations that do hire staff are often reclassified as real-estate property managers (NAICS 531). Treat the federal receipts as a floor for the paid-staff slice, not a measure of the whole; the true footprint is better gauged by assessments collected (~$120.9 billion in 2024 for HOAs alone).[1] A revenue split by activity, and any national tally of athletic-body revenue within this code, are not in our federal source set, so we do not state them.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

With only one child industry, all exposure runs through the 813990 service layer. No public company is an HOA or a sports league — they are non-profits. The cleanest listed proxies (detailed in the child primer):[1]

• FirstService Corporation (FSV, NASDAQ/TSX) — FirstService Residential is North America's largest community-association manager.
• Western Alliance Bancorporation (WAL, NYSE) and Pacific Premier Bancorp (PPBI, NASDAQ) — the leading specialized HOA-banking franchises.
• AppFolio (APPF, NASDAQ) and peers — management software used by HOA managers.

Private, non-investable operators concentrate the rest: management platforms (Associa, RealManage) and community/membership-software vendors (Vantaca, Frontsteps, CINC, Momentive Software), most private-equity-backed. No listed name derives the majority of its revenue from this code — size any position for that dilution.[1]

5. How the money works

Because the organizations are non-profit, returns accrue only to outside vendors, not to members. Inside a community association, revenue is almost entirely member assessments (HOA dues) split between an operating fund (day-to-day costs) and a reserve fund (long-lived repairs); the key health metric is reserve funding adequacy, and shortfalls force a special assessment or a bank loan. Athletic and other member bodies earn from media/broadcast rights, sanctioning and membership fees, events, and sponsorship, reinvesting surpluses rather than distributing them. The for-profit layer earns three ways: management fees per door, bank spread and float on sticky low-cost association deposits, and SaaS subscriptions plus embedded-payment take rates. (SaaS = software-as-a-service.) See the child primer for the tax mechanics (IRC Section 528 / IRS Form 1120-H versus Form 990).[1]

6. What drives demand

New construction defaults to HOAs (the community count grew from ~10,000 in 1970 to ~373,000 today), Sun Belt and suburban housing growth, aging building stock plus post-Surfside reserve mandates, insurance-cost inflation, youth-sports participation and media appetite, and steady digitization of dues and payments. Most of these are structural and non-cyclical at the top line.[1]

7. Regulation

Regulation is mostly at the state level (community-association statutes such as California's Davis-Stirling Act and Florida's Chapters 718/720 and post-Surfside reserve rules), overlaid with federal tax touchpoints (IRC Section 528 / Form 1120-H for HOAs; Form 990 and unrelated-business-income tax for larger tax-exempt bodies) and mortgage-market gatekeeping (Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac condo-eligibility standards). Athletic bodies additionally face antitrust and athlete-compensation law (the House v. NCAA settlement). Full detail is in the 813990 primer.[1]

8. Consolidation

The associations themselves do not consolidate — each is a separate legal entity tied to a specific property or membership, which is exactly why the federal concentration reading is so low (HHI 69.3).[2] Roll-up happens only in the service layers: national management platforms (FirstService Residential, Associa) buying regional managers, a handful of specialist HOA banks concentrating deposits, and software vendors consolidating around payments monetization.[1]

9. Risks

Underfunded reserves and special-assessment shocks, insurance availability in catastrophe-exposed states, anti-HOA regulatory/political backlash, and volunteer-board fraud on the association side; housing cyclicality, deposit/rate sensitivity for the specialty banks, roll-up integration risk, cyber/payments-data exposure, and a still-unsettled athlete-compensation regime for public investors in the service layer. Weak federal data visibility (the undercount above) compounds all of these.[1]

10. How to invest, and the outlook

There is no pure-play, single-industry public stock here; every listed name (FSV, WAL, PPBI, APPF) mixes this theme with adjacent businesses, so treat it as an indirect, recurring-revenue "arms supplier" theme. Concentrated exposure requires private routes — private equity in the management platforms and software vendors, proptech venture in the community-technology vendors, and private credit to stable operators. The structural backdrop is favorable and largely non-cyclical: associations already govern about a third of U.S. housing and keep growing, while reserve mandates and insurance inflation push assessments, borrowing, and payment volumes higher — mechanically lifting fees, deposits, and take rates across the vendor layer. The offsetting risks are affordability-driven HOA backlash, catastrophe-insurance stress, and the unsettled college-sports economics. Because this 5-digit industry is identical to its one child, the full how-to-invest playbook lives in the 813990 primer.[1]

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Sources

1. See the child-industry primer NAICS 813990 — Other Similar Organizations (except Business, Professional, Labor, and Political Organizations) for full sourcing, including: U.S. Census Bureau NAICS 2022 definition and cross-references; Foundation for Community Association Research, Community Association Fact Book 2025 and 2026 Outlook (~373,000 associations; ~78.1M residents; $120.9B assessments, 2024); IRS Form 1120-H / Form 990 instructions; FirstService, Western Alliance, Pacific Premier, and AppFolio disclosures; House v. NCAA settlement (June 2025); and Florida SIRS reserve rules.
2. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 Economic Census — Concentration by Largest Firms, NAICS 813990 (2022). Receipts $34.87B; 18,262 firms; CR4 12.8%, CR8 19.8%, CR20 30.8%, CR50 37.3%; HHI 69.3. https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022
3. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns 2023 — NAICS 813990 (2024). 18,140 establishments; 136,543 employees; $7.90B annual payroll; $1.91B Q1 payroll. https://data.census.gov/table/CBP2023.CB2300CBP