Donald Trump woke up on Wednesday with a new enemy to battle: big housing investors.
The president took to his social media platform to announce plans to block institutional investors from increasing their share of single-family housing stock.
“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“People live in homes, not corporations.”
No further details were provided by the president, other than that he plans to bring up housing and affordability issues during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in two weeks.
Shares of firms tied to the single-family rental market, including Blackstone and Invitation Homes, tumbled after Trump’s Truth Social missive.
On X, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said it was a “terrific idea and long overdue,” expressing interest in introducing a bill to support Trump’s proposal. Sen. Bernie Moreno, also a Republican, said he would introduce legislation.
They need not look far for guidance: Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Adam Smith — both Democrats — introduced legislation back in 2023 that would kick hedge funds out of the single-family housing market over 10 years. Despite being referred to two committees, the bill has never gone anywhere.
Institutional investors are frequently painted as a bogeyman to small players and individuals in the housing market. These entities — which often turn around and rent out the homes they buy to those who can’t afford homeownership — are painted as paying above market-rate for homes, driving up prices and boxing out others.
The data doesn’t conclusively back that up.
Investors accounted for roughly 30 percent of single-family home purchases at the beginning of 2025, according to Bloomberg. Small investors, however, made up more than 90 percent of that share. In fact, small-scale real estate investors are proving increasingly active in the single-family housing market.
Overall, large institutional investors own 2 percent of the nation’s single-family rental homes.
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