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President Donald Trump has said he wants to ban big investors from buying single-family homes in the US, posing a challenge to private capital groups that invest heavily in real estate.
“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 said in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday.
His move could affect private equity groups such as Blackstone and Cerberus that have amassed large residential portfolios.
Blackstone shares fell as much as 6 per cent following Trump’s post. Invitation Homes, a specialist investor in single-family homes formerly owned by Blackstone, dropped as much as 9 per cent.
Builders FirstSource, which supplies building products, fell 5 per cent, while American Homes 4 Rent, a real estate investment trust, lost 7 per cent.
Home affordability has become an increasingly important issue for the administration amid a wider cost of living crisis. The median age of first-time home buyers had risen to an all-time high of 40, the National Association of Realtors said late last year.
Trump said home ownership was “increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans”.
“I will discuss this topic, including further Housing and Affordability proposals, and more, at my speech in Davos in two weeks,” he added.
Private capital firms drew criticism as they stepped in to buy homes during the wave of foreclosures following the global financial crisis.
Big investors argue they play only a tiny role in the market, and that they also support new home building. Blackstone has said it owns 0.06 per cent of the 106mn single-family homes in the US, while institutional investors own only 0.5 per cent.
Some 25 per cent of homes were bought by investors, but small landlords play a much larger role with only 2 per cent being bought by those with portfolios bigger than 100 homes, according to consultancy John Burns in 2024.
Trump last year floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage as one answer to the housing affordability problem.
Additional reporting by George Steer