President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that prohibits Wall Street firms from purchasing single-family homes.
“To preserve the supply of single-family homes for American families and increase the paths to homeownership, it is the policy of my Administration that large institutional investors should not buy single-family homes that could otherwise be purchased by families,” Trump wrote in his executive order, titled “Stopping Wall Street from Competing with Main Street Home Buyers.”
The order continued:
At the same time, a growing share of single-family homes, often concentrated in certain communities, have been purchased by large Wall Street investors, crowding out families seeking to buy homes. Hardworking young families cannot effectively compete for starter homes with Wall Street firms and their vast resources. Neighborhoods and communities once controlled by middle-class American families are now run by faraway corporate interests. People live in homes, not corporations. My Administration will take decisive action to stop Wall Street from treating America’s neighborhoods like a trading floor and empower American families to own their homes.
President Donald Trump has focused on affordability in the new year ahead of the midterm elections, alongside other measures to make housing more affordable.
The Trump executive order would direct his administration to issue guidance within the next two months to impose restrictions on the sale of single-family homes. It also calls for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to review the rules and guidance relating to institutional buyers acquiring or holding single-family homes and consider revising them.
The order calls on the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to “review substantial acquisitions, including series of acquisitions, by large institutional investors of single-family homes in local single-family housing markets for anti-competitive effects and prioritize enforcement of the antitrust laws, as appropriate, against coordinated vacancy and pricing strategies by large institutional investors in local single-family home rental markets.”
“Wall Street giants including Blackstone, American Homes 4 Rent and Progress Residential bought thousands of single-family homes following the 2008 financial crisis, snapping up distressed properties and converting them into rentals,” the New York Post explained. These investors, as of 2022, own around 450,000 homes, or about three percent of all single-family rental homes across the country.
“In 22 specific US counties, institutional investors own between 5% and 10% of the housing stock. Those counties are concentrated in metro areas including Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Jacksonville, Fla.; Charlotte, NC; Tampa, Fla.; and Memphis, Tenn,” the Post reported. In comparison, mom-and-pop landlords own about 20 percent of single-family homes.