President Trump said Wednesday he will seek to ban large investors from buying and then renting out single-family homes – in a bold attempt to tackle the US housing crisis.
Trump did not say exactly how his plan would work, but it represents a major new initiative to lower the cost of homeownership after roughly a decade of large investors and private-equity firms buying up hundreds of thousands of single-family homes.
“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“It is for that reason, and much more, that 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 said he would discuss the ban – along with other affordability efforts – at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in two weeks.
Shares in Invitation Homes, the largest renter of single-family homes in the country, plunged 6% after Trump’s announcement. Blackstone and Apollo Global Management also fell roughly 6% and 5%, respectively.
Invitation Homes, Blackstone and Apollo Global Management did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
After the 2008 financial crisis sent home prices nosediving, major investment firms swooped in to buy up the leftover inventory – often purchasing properties in bulk at foreclosures.
Housing advocates have argued that widespread corporate ownership can reduce supply and inflate prices, pushing homeownership even further out of reach.
In early 2025, investors of all sizes – including a small sliver of larger firms – accounted for roughly 30% of single-family US home purchases, according to a report from CJ Patrick Co.
But in certain cities, investment firms hold much larger chunks of what historically would be starter homes – accounting for more than 20% of all home sales in Houston, Miami, Phoenix and Las Vegas during the pandemic, for example.
In 2024, institutional investors owned 25% of rental homes in Atlanta and 18% in Charlotte, according to a US Government Accountability Office analysis.
Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone is among those hoovering up homes – last year controlling more than 230,000 units as the largest private-equity owner of US apartments, according to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit watchdog group.
These Wall Street bigwigs often come equipped with huge all-cash offers, making it difficult for first-time buyers to compete.
These pressures – combined with falling construction rates and pandemic-era strains – pushed the national median single-family home price to $426,800 in the third quarter of 2025, according to the most recent data from the National Association of Realtors.
It hit a record high of $435,300 over the summer.
The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is 6.19%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
In another troubling sign for America’s residential real estate market, the median age for a first-time homebuyer hit 40 years olds in 2025, according to the NAR. That’s up from 38 years old in 2024 and 33 in 2020.
First-time buyers accounted for just 21% of all US home purchases in 2025 – a new record-low, the NAR said.
It’s unclear if Trump’s ban on institutional investor homebuying is possible without congressional approval.
“I understand the purpose is to remove corporate competition to keep home prices more affordable, and that is a good intention, but it will be very hard to execute,” Melissa Cohn, regional vice president of William Raveis Mortgage, told The Post.
Trump has sought to blunt Democrats’ election-year criticism of his economic records with a number of other proposals intended to lower costs — including using tariff threats to pressure pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices and vowing to do the same with oil and health insurance firms.
He has also pressured the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates at a faster pace and called for streamlining construction rules.
