Saying that “people live in homes, not corporations,” President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he intends to prohibit large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.
“I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday.
According to CNN, large institutional investors such as Blackstone, JPMorgan Chase, and other banks and investment firms have been snapping up family homes at an increasing rate in recent years, mostly seeking rising returns on home prices. Those investors often buy and rent out homes, and CNN said their presence grew after the foreclosure wave during the Great Recession in 2008.
That was particularly true in the Sun Belt states.
Announcement Impacts Stock Prices
Trump’s announcement had an immediate impact, as shares of Blackstone, an investing firm that owns and rents single-family homes, fell by as much as 9% on Wednesday after the president’s post.
Invitation Homes, the largest renter of single-family homes in the country, fell 6%, CNBC reported. Private equity firm Apollo Global Management also fell more than 5%, CNBC said.
Trump said plans to detail more housing and affordability proposals in the coming weeks, saying: “I will discuss this topic, including further Housing and Affordability proposals, and more, at my speech in Davos in two weeks.”
The president is scheduled to give an address at the World Economic Forum later this month in Davos, Switzerland.
In recent years, the cost of buying a home in the U.S. has surged, in large part because of a housing market that has remained historically stuck because of low inventory, combined with mortgage rates higher than 6%, .
Beyond the general lack of housing, CNN said that many sellers have been unwilling to give up the ultra-low mortgage rates they locked in during the pandemic, when the Federal Reserve brought down interest rates to almost zero.
Between the start of 2020 and the third quarter of 2025, home prices rose nearly 55% nationwide, according to a recent report from the National Association of Home Builders.
Lawmakers React to Trump’s Proposal
CNN said that no investor owned 1,000 or more single-family rental homes as of 2011, citing the Government Accountability Office. But, by 2015, institutional investors collectively owned up to 300,000 homes.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have proposed barring certain corporate investors from the home-buying market, CNN said. The legislators argued that the investors’ practice of buying houses en masse has pushed up prices and made it harder for individual Americans to find homes.
Semafor reported that Republican lawmakers are wanting clarity on Trump’s proposal that will likely face fierce opposition from Wall Street.
It “can mean a lot of different things,” House Financial Services Chair French Hill, R-Arkansas, said. “That’s why I don’t want to generalize and give an impromptu answer.”
Rep. Mike Flood, R-Nebraska, chair of the committee’s housing panel, said he, too, “want[s] to see what the president’s proposal is” before weighing in, Semafor reported. “The good thing here is that our nation’s chief executive is identifying housing as one of the big issues of this Congress.”
Some GOP senators, such as Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, were quick to voice their support.
Some housing experts and economists have criticized the idea of banning large investors, saying that it would have little impact on overall housing stock and risk depressing investment in the market.
“This will not fix housing affordability. It may boost single-family purchases, but it will come at the cost of reducing single-family rentals,” said Jaret Seiberg, analyst at TD Cowen, said in a note Wednesday.
