President Donald Trump Is ‘Taking Steps’ To Ban Investors From Buying Single-Family Homes

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he is moving to block large investors from purchasing single-family homes.

"I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. "People live in homes, not corporations."

Trump added that homeownership, which has long been the "pinnacle of the American Dream," has become increasingly out of reach for many Americans, particularly younger ones, and blamed this development on what he characterized as "Record High Inflation" under his predecessor, Joe Biden, and the Democrats.

Trump also said he will be addressing this topic and additional housing and affordability proposals in a speech at the Davos World Economic Forum starting on Jan. 19 in Switzerland.

It was not immediately clear what legal measures or legislative mechanisms Trump was planning to deploy to prevent private companies from purchasing properties.

Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com®, cast doubt on the notion that keeping investors out of the housing market would meaningfully improve the situation.

"The proposal is unlikely to move the needle on affordability," says Krimmel. "The affordability crisis is fundamentally a supply problem, and meaningful relief requires adding homes, both through new construction or through inventory gains in chronically constrained markets, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest."

“The National Association of Realtors® is encouraged that the administration and members of Congress are focused on addressing the nation’s housing affordability and supply crises," Shannon McGahn, NAR executive vice president and chief advocacy officer, tells Realtor.com. "We share the goal of ensuring there are enough places for people to live and of expanding access to homeownership—especially for first-time buyers—and ensuring that housing policy strengthens communities rather than limiting opportunity."

McGahn points out that at their annual conference in November, Realtors® adopted policy aimed at incentivizing large institutional owners of single-family rentals to transition homes back to owner-occupants while also creating new housing supply.

"As the administration and Congress continue to develop proposals in this space, NAR looks forward to working collaboratively to share our research, policy expertise, and practical solutions that boost supply, improve affordability, and put more families on a sustainable path to homeownership," says McGahn.

NAR research shows investor activity varies widely across states—reflecting differences in housing supply, price points, rental demand, and tax or legal structures.

States such as Texas, Ohio, Utah, Tennessee, Indiana, and Oklahoma show higher overall shares of entity purchases, largely driven by LLC activity rather than large corporate ownership, according to NAR.

Affordability concerns

Trump's announcement comes as the president and the Republican Party are facing mounting pressure to address voters' affordability concerns ahead of the midterm elections in November.

In his prime-time address to the nation in December, the president promised to unveil "some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history" in the new year.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, applauded Trump's proposal to rein in investor activity, posting on X that he will introduce a bill in the Senate "to codify this into law."

However, many questions remain about how this would play out.

"As with similar recent housing policy proposals, it’s worth noting that the feasibility of banning institutional investors matters, not just the economics," says Krimmel. "Whether the federal government can legally bar certain buyers from purchasing single-family homes is far from settled, and the lack of detail here makes it impossible to assess how such a policy would actually work in practice."

For context, in the second quarter of 2025, investor purchases accounted for less than 11% of all residential transactions, totalling about 136,000 single-family homes. That figure includes investors of all sizes, according to an investor report midyear update from Realtor.com released in November. 

Large investors made up just 20% of investor purchases, amounting to fewer than 20,000 homes bought in the second quarter. 

"In other words, the segment this policy targets is an already narrow and shrinking slice of the market," notes Krimmel.

Since the Great Recession of 2008, which triggered a foreclosure crisis, investors small and large—among them major industry players like Blackstone and JPMorganChase—have purchased homes to turn a profit by renting them out. This activity peaked in 2022, before mortgage rates started climbing. 

In recent years, institutional investors have come under fire from housing advocates and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who accuse them of shrinking the available housing inventory and putting upward pressure on prices.

In a January research note, Blackstone sought to downplay the impact of investors on the housing market, saying that institutions own just 0.5% of all single-family homes in the U.S., according to Reuters.

An August 2024 study by the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, however, put the figure closer to 1%.

In response to Trump's post, shares of some of the nation's largest homebuilders, including Toll Brothers and KB Home, plunged, while Blackstone’s stock briefly fell more than 9% before rebounding.