In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump claimed the American Dream of homeownership is slipping out of people’s reach, “especially younger Americans.”
“It is for that reason, and much more, that 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. People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump’s post continued. He added he will be discussing this topic more at his upcoming speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in two weeks. He did not elaborate further on what specific steps this ban would take.
First-time homebuyers can face competition not just from other individual homebuyers, but also large investment firms that hold single-family homes as commodities, sometimes to rent them out. These institutional investors/landlords have attracted criticism as having an unfair financial and speed advantage in the market next to an average first-time buyer; states such as New York have introduced regulation to curtail institutional investors, while legislation has also been introduced at the national level. Now, President Trump is joining the call.
In the hours after the announcement, reaction from government officials, real estate business leaders and industry advocates were generally positive, though some doubted the move would have a significant impact.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner voiced support for the effort in a post on X: “President Trump is not afraid to take bold action to make housing more affordable for the American people.”
Following Trump’s announcement, the stock of institutional investors such as Invitation Homes and investment giant Blackstone dropped noticeably.
An August 2025 report by Cotality found that institutional investors made about one-third of home purchases in the first half of 2025. This, though, was attributed to a drop in owner-transactions more so than a ramp up in institutional investors.
In emailed comments to RISMedia, Cotality Chief Economist Thom Malone noted that “a ban could reduce home prices, but the effect would likely be modest, since most investors are small-scale buyers rather than large institutional players.” Malone added that banning institutional investors from buying could also act as downward pressure on new construction, in turn offsetting any price declines and potentially upping rents as supply trends down.
In 2023, HomeSmart Founder and CEO Matt Widdows criticized institutional investors, saying that real estate becoming a commodity disadvantages consumers. While the common criticism is that institutional investors buy up housing supply in large quantities and thus drive prices higher, not everyone agrees they are a defining factor in the current housing affordability crisis.
In a statement, Realtor.com® Senior Economist Jake Krimmel said that “large corporate ownership is a red herring in the broader supply debate.” As for Trump’s proposal, Krimmel offered an uncertain view of the proposal’s mechanics and a doubtful one of its intended economic impact.
“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,” Krimmel said, adding that banning institutional investors was also “unlikely to move the needle on unaffordability.”
“Institutional investors own only a small share of the single-family housing stock nationwide, and Trump’s proposal appears to focus on banning future purchases rather than forcing existing owners to sell,” Krimmell elaborated. Malone also said that forcing the sale of existing investor-owned homes would have a much bigger impact than banning future purchases.
“Even using a conservative definition of ‘large’—buyers with 51 or more purchases since 2001—such large investors made up less than 20% of investor purchases in the first half of 2025,” said Krimmel. “Importantly, large investor activity has been declining since 2022, while small investor participation has been rising and recently reached its highest level since 2007. In other words, the segment this policy targets is an already narrow and shrinking slice of the market.”
“The impact would also vary significantly by location,” Malone added. “Atlanta stands out as the only major market where institutional investors account for more than 10% of purchases, making it a place where the policy could have a more noticeable effect.”
