Houston’s Single-Family Rental Problem Trump Proposal

Wall Street’s growing grip on single-family rentals is increasingly best illustrated in Houston, a Sun Belt market where institutional landlords snapped up thousands of homes after the pandemic and reshaped entire neighborhoods.

But housing experts contend that President Trump’s proposal to ban large institutional investors from buying more homes would likely do little to make homes more affordable for Houstonians, the Houston Chronicle reported.

“While it’s always popular politically to announce that you’re going to slay a Wall Street dragon, this crusade isn’t going to save the princess,” Rick Sharga, president and CEO of CJ Patrick Company, told the outlet. “The numbers simply aren’t large enough to make a difference.”

Institutional investors — typically defined as landlords owning at least 1,000 homes — accounted for just 2.9 percent of home purchases nationally in the first nine months of 2025, according to data from Cotality. Trump has said he will flesh out the proposal this month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, though the plan would likely require congressional action and faces major questions about enforcement.

In Houston, the investor share of rentals looks even smaller when narrowed to the biggest players. While investors overall own about 16.8 percent of the region’s housing stock, or roughly 325,000 homes, large institutional firms control just 12,500 houses, less than 1 percent of all homes in the metro area, Sharga said.

That limited share doesn’t mean the impact is evenly spread. Large investors are heavily concentrated in specific neighborhoods like Atascocita and parts of Aldine, where more than 20 percent of single-family rentals were owned by 26 major investment firms as of 2023, according to research by Stephen Avrill Sherman of Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

Still, Trump administration officials have indicated the proposal would not force investors to sell existing homes, meaning those pockets of high investor ownership would likely remain intact even if a ban moved forward.

Supporters of a ban argue institutional investors outbid would-be homeowners and crowd them out of starter homes. In theory, restricting that demand could put downward pressure on prices, said Thom Malone, principal economist at Cotality. In practice, he told the publication, other buyers would likely step in.

“Even if institutional investors disappeared, it probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal,” Malone said, noting that smaller investors could simply replace them.

Some analysts also point out that many homes targeted by large landlords are older and in need of rehab, properties that may not appeal to typical owner-occupants. Without investor capital, some could sit vacant and deteriorate.

Potential ripple effects could follow. A ban could cool new home construction if builders anticipate fewer buyers, and it could squeeze renters if the supply of single-family rentals shrinks. About a quarter of Houston-area renters live in single-family homes, according to a 2023 Kinder Institute housing report.

Large landlords, for their part, say they provide a needed rung on the housing ladder. A spokesperson for Pretium, which owns thousands of Houston-area homes, said the firm offers “quality rental homes in neighborhoods of opportunity” for families saving to buy.

For economists, the bigger takeaway is that affordability fixes are slower. Changing zoning rules, boosting supply and expanding down payment assistance don’t make for splashy announcements, said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather, but they address the root problem.

“When politicians are looking for a quick win on housing, they gravitate to solutions that sound great,” she said. “They just don’t solve the tough problem of increasing housing supply.”

— Eric Weilbacher