America’s housing affordability crisis is mostly a supply-and-demand problem: Not enough houses, too many people needing a place to live. President Donald Trump has an unexpected solution. He wants to take on Wall Street.
Trump last week said he would “ban Wall Street firms from buying up single-family homes” to ease affordability issues, said Reuters. Big institutions like Blackstone, American Homes 4 Rent and Progress Residential have “bought thousands of single-family homes” since the Great Recession, and “institutional investors” now own about 3% of all single-family rental homes. “People live in homes, not corporations,” the president said on Truth Social. The threatened move to ban big investors would align Trump with Democrats who have long “criticized corporate homebuying, claiming it has helped stoke housing costs,” said Reuters.
Defending the American dream?
“It’s about time,” said Brian Hamilton at The Hill. Institutional investors own more than 15% of rental housing in cities like Atlanta, Jacksonville, Tampa and Charlotte — a fact that is probably connected to the 55% rise in real estate prices over the last half-decade. It has left many Americans “locked out of homeownership.” The big investors “buy up supply and basically corner the market” in some cities, driving up prices or turning potential homeowners into renters. Wall Street “must be thwarted to preserve and defend the American Dream.”
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Big institutional landlords are “not the cause of the nation’s housing crisis,” said Binyamin Appelbaum at The New York Times. The best way to make housing more affordable is to “build more housing,” and that is unlikely to be helped by using private investors as a scapegoat with policy that “reduces investment in housing.” Construction was hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis, and since then the U.S. population has grown faster than the housing supply. But Trump has so far failed to “put forward any meaningful plans to increase housing construction.” Every single solution to the crisis should be judged by one question: “Will it result in more housing construction?”
“Scapegoating investment bankers is always politically popular,” said The Washington Post editorial board. But there is “no correlation” between housing shortages in any given state and its “share of homes owned by large investors.” Democrats have frequently criticized institutional investors, but Trump coming to a similar conclusion may give them space to acknowledge that the blame is “populist claptrap.” Blaming bankers “won’t do anything to make housing more affordable.”
Mom-and-pops still welcome
Trump’s proposed ban has “raised alarms across the real estate investment industry,” said Business Insider. But White House officials say the proposal is “forward-looking” and will not result in a “forced sale of current holdings,” said Bloomberg. “The idea here is bygones are bygones,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The final proposal will be designed to exclude institutional investors while keeping “mom-and-pop” landlords in the market. The administration wants to keep “families who rent out to their other family members,” he said.
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Joel Mathis is a writer with 30 years of newspaper and online journalism experience. His work also regularly appears in National Geographic and The Kansas City Star. His awards include best online commentary at the Online News Association and (twice) at the City and Regional Magazine Association.
