President Donald Trump said he would move to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes as part of a push to address housing affordability.
“People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump said in his post.
Trump announced the step on Wednesday on social media after saying last month he was planning to unveil “some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history”.
Shares of Blackstone Inc. fell by as much as 9.3% on Trump’s housing comment. The company is a major investor in single-family homes in the US. In 2021, it bought Home Partners of America in a $6 billion deal that added 17,000 rentals to its holdings. More recently, it bought Toronto-based Tricon Residential Inc. in a $3.5 billion transaction that added 38,000 US rental houses.
Trump did not immediately provide details on what his effort would entail but said he would ask Congress to codify the action. Trump said he would discuss the topic — alongside other cost-of-living initiatives — during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos later this month.
Investors of all sizes accounted for about 30% of single-family home purchases in the beginning of 2025. But small investors account for more than 90% of the market of investor owners; larger institutional investors own about 2% of the nation’s single-family rental housing stock.
The cost of housing has soared in recent years due to a historic supply shortage, after construction rates fell in the wake of the global financial crisis. A pandemic boom exacerbated the problem: As of August, the S&P Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price Index had risen 68% since January 2020.
Both Democrats and Republicans have been keen to show they take the housing problem seriously heading into the November midterms.
