President Donald Trump stated that the U.S. ought to prevent large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes, claiming that corporate ownership has contributed to making housing less accessible to average Americans.
“For an extensive period, the act of buying and possessing a home symbolized the apex of the American Dream. It was the reward for diligent effort and proper conduct, but now, due to the Record High Inflation instigated by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is becoming increasingly unattainable for far too many individuals, particularly younger Americans,” Trump expressed in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.
“It is for this reason, among many others, that I am promptly initiating actions to prohibit large institutional investors from acquiring additional single-family homes, and I will be urging Congress to codify it. Residences are for people, not corporations,” he emphasized.
Private equity leaders, real estate investment trusts, and other sizable institutional investors have gathered substantial collections of single-family rental properties over the last decade. Many have contended that these investments have diminished housing availability for prospective buyers and have contributed to rising prices.
Invitation Homes, the largest renter of single-family homes in the nation, plummeted 6%. Shares of Blackstone, a firm that invests in and leases single-family homes, fell over 5%. Private equity company Apollo Global Management also decreased by more than 5%.
The national median price for existing single-family homes reached $426,800 in the third quarter of 2025, following a record high of $435,300 in the summer, as per the National Association of Realtors. The current average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage stands at 6.19%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Blackstone emerged as the largest private-equity owner of apartments within the U.S., boasting over 230,000 units, according to statistics from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project released last year. In recent years, Blackstone has invested billions to acquire real estate firms such as Tricon Residential, American Campus Communities, and AIR Communities.
Trump did not offer specifics regarding how such a ban would be enforced. He mentioned intentions to present further housing and affordability suggestions during an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos in two weeks.
Senator Tim Scott, who leads the committee overseeing housing in the Senate, expressed his support for Trump’s affordability initiative but suggested that a more effective path would be his bipartisan “ROAD to Housing” bill.
“2026 must signify the year we rectify housing affordability for working families. I appreciate President Trump’s eagerness to discover methods for increasing the number of homeowners, particularly first-time buyers,” Scott stated in a comment to CNBC’s Emily Wilkins. “My goal is to promote significant solutions that enlarge housing supply and lessen costs — including advancing our unanimously approved ROAD to Housing Act — because that is how we make the American Dream more reachable.”
— Reporting contributed by CNBC’s Alex Harring.
