President Donald Trump’s pledge to bar corporate investors from buying homes would land with outsized force in Florida, where Wall Street-backed landlords have spent years amassing vast portfolios of single-family rentals.
Any attempt to curtail institutional ownership is likely to face stiff opposition from Wall Street and the real estate industry, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported.
Global asset managers, private equity firms and real estate investment trusts control tens of billions of dollars of residential real estate across the Sunshine State. Their footprint ballooned during the pandemic-era population surge, as institutional capital chased fast-growing Sun Belt markets.
By some estimates, corporate investors now own between 20 and 25 percent of Florida’s single-family rental homes.
That buying spree has fueled backlash from would-be homeowners and politicians, who argue that deep-pocketed landlords are crowding them out and shrinking an already tight supply of homes for sale.
Trump has offered few details on how a ban would work, in statements that marked his first major foray into the housing affordability debate. He is expected to outline the proposal more fully at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland later this month.
Florida has been a cash cow for large-scale rental operators. Invitation Homes, the nation’s largest single-family rental landlord and a former Blackstone unit, generated $556 million in revenue from Florida properties in the first nine months of last year, according to financial filings. The company manages nearly 27,000 homes statewide, with a portfolio valued at $4.2 billion.
American Homes 4 Rent owns almost 8,700 single-family properties in Florida worth roughly $2.1 billion. Privately held firms such as Progress Residential, Tricon Residential and FirstKey Homes control tens of thousands more units, though their exact holdings are harder to pin down. One estimate put the number of Florida single-family homes owned by corporate investors at 117,000 as of late 2024, the outlet said.
Smaller players have joined the rush, too. Tampa-based Second Avenue raised $250 million in 2022 after quietly building a single-family rental platform since 2017.
Economists are skeptical that a ban would meaningfully move the needle.
“Institutional investors own about 20 percent of the single-family rental market nationally, so it’s not a big part of the housing stock,” Jeff Korzenik, chief economist at Fifth Third Bank, told the outlet. “The reality is that affordability comes down to supply, and who owns that supply is a less important factor.” — Rachel Stone
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Trump puts institutional single-family home investors in crosshairs: “People live in homes, not corporations”