By Mary Prenon

President Donald Trump recently proposed several policies to tackle the severe housing affordability problem facing Americans, including a ban on big institutional investors purchasing single-family homes.

While real estate associations, institutional investors, and economists have reacted differently to the move, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have shown support for it.

According to experts and recent reports, the share of institutional investment in homes is small overall but concentrated in specific areas. However, when inventory is tight, even these relatively small purchases can significantly raise prices for potential homebuyers.

Institutional investors are defined as firms owning 1,000 or more properties.

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing,” the president wrote in a Jan. 7 post on TruthSocial. “But now … that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans.”

He said he would take “immediate” action to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes and would call on Congress to enact the action into law.

According to an October 2025 report from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, in 2024, the median single-family home cost five times the median household income, nearly matching the 2005 record high.

A Jan. 14 report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) showed the median price of single-family existing homes increased to $409,500 in December 2025—a 0.2 percent uptick from December 2024.

Meanwhile, a Census Bureau report on the same day showed the median price of new homes in October 2025 fell by 3.3 percent from the previous month, to $392,300.

‘A Tale of Two Cities’

Shannon McGahn, NAR executive vice president and chief advocacy officer, supports the idea of a ban on institutional home purchases, noting their goal is to ensure that housing policies strengthen communities—not limit opportunities.

“NAR is encouraged that the administration and members of Congress are focused on addressing the nation’s housing affordability and supply crises,” she told The Epoch Times.

“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.”

In a November 2025 report, the NAR said the share of first-time buyers—who typically begin homeownership by purchasing entry-level homes—fell to a record low of 21 percent, while the typical age of first-time buyers climbed to an all-time high of 40.

“The historically low share of first-time buyers underscores the real-world consequences of a housing market starved for affordable inventory,” Jessica Lautz, the NAR’s deputy chief economist and vice president of research, said in the report. She said the share of first-time buyers has declined by 50 percent since 2007.

“Unfolding in the housing market is a tale of two cities,” Lautz said. “We’re seeing buyers with significant housing equity making larger down payments and all-cash offers, while first-time buyers continue to struggle to enter the market.”At its annual conference in November 2025, the NAR adopted a policy to incentivize large institutional owners of single-family rentals to transition the homes back to owner-occupied units, while also creating new housing supply.

“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,” McGahn said.

In a November 2025 report, Realtor.com said that the housing shortage was estimated to be close to 4 million homes.

“While investors help meet rental demand, their activity can constrain for-sale inventory by competing directly with potential homebuyers,” the report said.

It said that by continuously purchasing lower-priced homes—especially “fixer-uppers,” investors were also scooping up the most affordable properties, often leaving would-be homeowners with only higher-priced, unaffordable options.

‘Part of the Solution’

Sean Dobson, CEO, chief information officer, and chairman of The Amherst Group, a diversified global investment management firm that purchases residential real estate, says that putting institutional housing at risk threatens real families.

“Blaming institutional ownership for housing unaffordability is inaccurate and gets both the problem and the solution wrong,” he told The Epoch Times.

“America’s housing crisis stems from years of policy failure, not the families who rent or the capital that houses them.”

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with an office in New York City, Amherst currently serves more than 200,000 residents. Dobson noted that about 85 percent of them would not qualify to buy the homes they are currently living in as tenants.

According to the company’s website, Amherst has acquired nearly 60,000 homes with a value of $10.8 billion. The company invests an average of $35,000 per home in repairs and renovations. While some of these homes hit local markets for sale, the majority are leased and managed by the company across 32 U.S. markets.

“Through private, unsubsidized investment, institutional capital restores neglected housing and delivers real solutions at a time when much of the housing finance system no longer works,” Dobson said. “Our industry is not the cause of the housing crisis; it is part of the solution.”

The Epoch Times reached out to other investment firms involved in large, institutional purchases of single-family homes. A spokesperson for Atlanta-based FirstKey Homes declined to comment. FirstKey owns and leases out more than 50,000 single-family homes.

Calls to Blackstone, American Homes 4 Rent, and Invitation Homes were not returned by time of publication. Headquartered in New York City, Blackstone’s portfolio includes nearly 270,000 single and multi-family rental units. Las Vegas-based American Homes 4 Rent owns more than 61,000 homes, while Dallas-based Invitation Homes offers more than 85,000 single-family homes for rent.

The National Rental Home Council (NRHC), a trade association for the single-family home rental industry, says that while housing affordability is challenging, many families still want the comfort, space, and amenities that go hand in hand with single-family home life.

“At a time when the costs of owning a home … are increasingly out of reach for many Americans, single-family rentals provide families with a viable housing option and professional housing providers are part of the solution,” the NRHC said in a statement.

“They help Americans get into high-quality, move-in ready homes and they are building new housing across the country.”

The NRHC contends that renting a home is far less expensive than buying one, given add-ons such as mortgage interest rates, insurance, and home repairs.

According to the NRHC, professional housing providers in 2024 invested some $2 billion in home renovations and upgrades and employed more than 8,000 local contractors across the country.

Implementation Challenges

Thom Malone, principal economist at Cotality, told The Epoch Times he believes banning investment firms from making large-scale home purchases may have only a slight impact on the market. Irvine, California-based Cotality is a global property intelligence firm offering data, analysis, and technology for the real estate, mortgage, and home services industries.

“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,” he said. “A decline in investor demand could also slow new construction, offsetting some of the downward pressure on prices.”

At the same time, he noted, rents could rise as a reduced supply of homes may tighten the rental market, potentially pushing some buyers out of more affluent neighborhoods where home ownership is already out of reach.

“Atlanta stands out as the only major market where institutional investors account for more than 10 percent of purchases, making it a place where the policy could have a more noticeable effect,” he added.

“Most importantly, this proposal would stop future purchases while not requiring investors to sell existing homes—an action that would have a far greater impact on the market.”

Anthony Chan, former global chief economist at JPMorgan Chase and Founder of Chan Economists, says a proposed ban on large investment home purchases deserves some careful consideration.

In a Jan. 10 blog, Chan said that investors often provide all-cash offers that individual buyers may find hard to match. “Critics assert that this dynamic not only raises prices for single-family homes but also reduces the inventory of homes available for owner-occupants,” he wrote.

However, he noted that large investors typically purchase and rehabilitate homes that are often overlooked, thereby increasing the quality of available housing.

Chan also says that restricting investment buyers could reduce the capital available for building and rehabbing, resulting in a potential slowdown of the development of new homes and rental units.

In addition, Chan notes that large investors offer options for families who are not ready or able to purchase a home.

“Limiting institutional participation could disrupt these rental markets or shift ownership to smaller landlords who may lack resources to maintain properties at the same scale,” he said in the blog.

He concludes that banning these types of purchases will have only a modest effect on inventory in some markets.

“Furthermore, defining and enforcing a ban on large institutional buyers poses practical challenges; investors could use shell companies or complex ownership structures to circumvent restrictions, complicating regulatory efforts and legal enforcement,” he said.

Institutional Investor Presence

With nearly 50 million rental units of all types currently on the market across America, the NRHC said in a recent statement that small investors own and operate more than 90 percent of these units, while professional housing providers own about 450,000 homes, or less than 1 percent.

“This is a limited footprint, not a market domination,” it said.

An October 2025 Realtor.com report also noted that more than 90 percent of investor-owned homes in the United States belong to small landlords owning fewer than 11 properties.

“Even in states with the highest rates of investor ownership, it’s not institutional buyers driving the trend,” the report said.

A recent Piedmont Crescent Capital report showed that large institutions held about 1 percent to 3 percent of single-family homes and less than 5 percent of single-family rentals nationwide in 2025.

“In a low-inventory environment, those marginal purchases can meaningfully raise prices for would-be owner-occupants, particularly where housing supply elasticity is low,” the report said.

The report stated that the impact is highly dependent on geography, noting that institutional investors are mainly concentrated in fast-growing metros in the Sun Belt and Midwest—including Nashville, Tennessee; Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida, and Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix, among others—often owning more than 15–30 percent of the rental stock in these areas.

Citing empirical research, the report said these local buying patterns add about 1.5–2 percentage points to annual home price growth and account for roughly 5 percent to 10 percent of total price increases during periods of very tight housing supply.

Bipartisan Support

Notably, this issue is one that has united both Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Last year, Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon introduced the Humans Over Private Equity (HOPE) for Homeownership Act, which is currently pending in the Senate Finance Committee.The bill is designed to limit hedge fund ownership of single-family homes. It also includes penalties, tax disincentives, and restrictions on corporate landlords.

“Too many families are struggling to afford to rent or to buy a home,” Smith said in the original 2025 statement announcing the bill. “Large investors are buying up homes and squeezing out prospective buyers.”

“Houses should be homes for families, not profit centers for hedge funds,” Merkley added in the statement. “Let’s kick hedge funds to the curb to restore the dream of homeownership, one of the foundations that working families need to thrive.”

Republican Rep. Byron Donalds from Florida also supports a ban on institutional home purchases.

“Thank you @POTUS for putting young Americans first,” he recently posted on X. “Every American deserves a shot at the American Dream and I look forward to working to codify this upcoming Executive Order.”