Trump says he will ban Wall Street investments in single-family homes

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump on Jan 7 said his administration is moving to ban Wall Street firms from buying up single-family homes in a bid to reduce home prices, a potential blow for private-equity landlords that also pressured homebuilder shares.

In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump said he was immediately taking steps to implement the ban, which he would also call on Congress to codify in law.

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” Mr Trump wrote, going on to add that inflation had put that dream out of reach for many Americans.

“People live in homes, not corporations,” said Mr Trump, who is under growing pressure to address voter anxiety over the cost of living ahead of the 2026 congressional mid-term elections.

A Republican move to target Wall Street landlords would, perversely, align the party with Democrats, who for years have criticised corporate homebuying, saying it has helped stoke housing costs, and have unsuccessfully pushed Bills to crack down on the trend.

Wall Street institutions such as Blackstone, American Homes 4 Rent and Progress Residential have bought thousands of single-family homes since the financial crisis of 2008 led to a wave of home foreclosures.

By June 2022, institutional investors owned around 450,000 homes, or about 3 per cent, of all single-family rental homes nationally, according to a 2024 study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

American Homes 4 Rent dropped to a near three-year low of US$28.84 and was halted for volatility before trading resumed. Its shares were last down nearly 6 per cent at US$30.61.

Blackstone shares hit a one-month low of US$147.52 and were last down about 4.5 per cent at US$155.33. The PHLX housing index was down 2.3 per cent on the session, on track for its biggest daily percentage drop since Nov 17.

Blackstone, American Homes 4 Rent and Progress Residential did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wall Street landlords dispute that their investments have stoked inflation. In a January 2025 research note, Blackstone said institutional home purchases have declined 90 per cent since 2022, and that supply shortage is the reason for house price increases.

The GAO study found that the effect of institutional homebuying on homeownership opportunities was unclear, due in part to limited data.

Critics say Wall Street firms are bad landlords, skimping on upkeep in order to keep investors happy, and wrongly evicted tenants during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Resident experience is hurting as a result,” said Mr Jeff Holzmann, chief operating officer of RREAF Holdings, a Dallas-based real estate investment firm with more than US$5 billion (S$6.4 billion) in assets.

“Instead of you calling your landlord to discuss a problem, you’re calling a call centre that gives you the runaround.”

Affordability pressure

Mr Trump, who has occasionally dismissed affordability concerns and blamed inflation on his Democratic predecessor, has seen his own public approval mostly sag since his inauguration as Americans worry about the economy.

It was not immediately clear what authority Mr Trump would draw upon to impose an immediate ban, and he did not outline the changes he was seeking from Congress.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The US President was due to sign unspecified executive orders later on Jan 7.

Since Mr Trump’s first electoral victory, US home prices have risen 75 per cent, more than double the increase in overall consumer prices tracked by CPI. But home sales price increases have eased substantially over the past year.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency last week reported that national home sales prices had risen just 1.7 per cent in October from a year earlier – the lowest in more than 13 years. That is less than half the rate by which they were climbing when Mr Trump came back into office in January 2025, and a fraction of their peak gains of nearly 20 per cent in 2021 and 2022.

A big factor in home price inflation has been a dearth of supply of properties for sale, although that has also been slowly improving in the last year or so, according to National Association of Realtors data.

As at November, annual shelter-cost inflation, which shot to as high as 8.2 per cent in the Covid-19 pandemic aftermath, had also eased to 3 per cent – the lowest in more than four years, according to the Labour Department’s Consumer Price Index. REUTERS