Blackstone Launching Lending Platform for Homebuilders

Blackstone is putting forward a lending solution for homebuilders.

The firm is launching a lending platform with support from affiliate Brio Homebuilder Solutions, Bloomberg reported. The goal of the platform is to finance the construction of 50,000 homes annually, which would be released for public sale.

The announcement comes as the private equity giant contends with rising opposition to its residential holdings, including from President Donald Trump’s administration.

“We have to make the American dream more accessible,” Blackstone president Jon Gray said at last week’s Milken Institute Global Conference.

Blackstone isn’t the only institutional player interested in backing builders. Last year, Apollo Global Management launched Olympus Housing Capital to finance land acquisition and vertical construction. Pretium also recently raised $500 million to lend to flippers, builders and land developers.

Blackstone touts plenty of experience in the single-family housing market. The firm acquired Home Partners of America in 2021 for $6 billion, picking up 17,000 rental properties in the process. It later acquired Tricon Residential.

The blowback to institutional ownership of single-family homes culminated in Trump signing two executive orders to bar companies from acquiring properties in bulk. But the policy specifics are still unclear as the two houses of Congress have since passed housing bills starkly divided on the issue.

The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers last month released an annual report that pinned the U.S. housing shortage at 10 million homes, a figure based on the pace of homebuilding before the 2008 economic downturn. The estimate is significantly higher than other organizations’ figures, such as Freddie Mac’s 3.7 million units tabulated in the third quarter of 2024 and the National Association of Realtors’ 5.5 million units mentioned in June 2021.

The administration’s affordability push has also included executive orders to ease mortgage rules and cut red tape for construction permits, the proposal to bar institutional investors from buying single-family homes and an order for Fannie Mae and Freddie to buy up to $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities.

— Holden Walter-Warner