It seems like the property is somewhat random, and it's not based on distance. Are there any methods to change this?
No, you can't change it. And frankly, I don't see a reason for it.
It is not really random, every city has its own bounding box (which you can see on the minimap). If the building is within both bounding boxes of two cities it might seem random, otherwise the building belongs to the city in which bounding box it is.