Trump to Push Congress to Ban Institutional Purchases of Single-Family Homes

Republican Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin said it's imperative to make homeownership more accessible by bringing down interest rates and increasing housing supply and he's waiting to see more details of the president's plan to block institutional investors from buying single-family homes.

President Donald Trump said he would move to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes, part of a push to address housing affordability ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

“People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump said in a social media post Wednesday announcing the effort, adding that he would expound on the plan at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later this month.

The news sent shares of homebuilders, including Toll Brothers Inc., Invitation Homes Inc., KB Home and PulteGroup Inc., down. Shares of Blackstone Inc. — a major investor in single-family homes in the US —fell by as much as 9.3%, though later pared some of those losses.

The initiative comes after Trump’s allies have repeatedly raised alarms that affordability has become a political albatross for the GOP heading into the November elections. Trump urged Republican lawmakers Tuesday to avoid losing control of the House this year, saying it would lead to his impeachment.

There’s reason for the White House’s concern: Just 36% of Americans said they approved of Trump’s job performance in a Gallup poll released in December, about 2 percentage points higher than his personal low before his first term ended in January 2021. Nearly half of adults described current economic conditions as “poor.”

Shortly after the president’s post, Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio announced he would introduce legislation to codify Trump’s proposal into law.

Republican Representative Bryan Steil, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said he welcomed the focus on housing policy and looked forward to learning more details about the president’s proposal.

“Far too many people can’t afford the homes that they could have a generation ago,” Steil said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. He said the two key policies lawmakers should work on are “reducing inflation to lower interest rates and working to increase total housing supply by removing, in particular, regulatory red tape.”

It’s not clear how much of an impact a ban could have on housing prices.

The cost of housing has soared in recent years due to a historic supply shortage, after construction rates fell in the wake of the global financial crisis. A pandemic boom exacerbated the problem: As of August, the S&P Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price Index had risen 68% since January 2020.

Talking Point

Investors of all sizes accounted for about 30% of single-family home purchases in the beginning of 2025. But small investors account for more than 90% of the market of investor owners; larger institutional investors own about 2% of the nation’s single-family rental housing stock.

Blaming corporations for the housing affordability crisis has become a familiar political talking point in recent years, with both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns in 2024 entertaining the idea. But industry economists say booting investors out of the market is a bad idea, as they are pouring money into a troubled market.

In 2021 Blackstone bought Home Partners of America in a $6 billion deal that added 17,000 rentals to its holdings. More recently, it bought Toronto-based Tricon Residential Inc. in a $3.5 billion transaction that added 38,000 US rental houses. Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone’s chief executive officer, has been a major donor to Trump’s political operation for years.

Institutional investors started buying foreclosed homes in bulk following the 2008 financial crisis, when firms like Blackstone, Donald Mullen’s Pretium and Starwood Capital started acquiring homes at deeply distressed prices. Lending standards tightened, giving larger investors a leg up on smaller competitors, and people who had lost their homes were forced to rent, pushing up demand for single-family rentals.

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