President Donald Trump speaks at a training camp for House Republicans at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Jan. 6, 2026.
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President Donald Trump’s new focus on housing affordability has revealed a clear villain. It’s an institutional investor that owns sprawling single-family homes in fast-growing Sunbelt cities, where would-be homeowners increasingly compete with Wall Street.
In a social media post Wednesday, President Trump argued that corporate ownership is making housing even more unaffordable for ordinary Americans and said he would immediately take action to ban large institutional investors from purchasing more single-family homes.
This message may be aimed at metropolitan areas like Atlanta and Jacksonville, where investor ownership rates are much higher than the national average.
Institutional investors own only about 2% of the nation’s single-family rental housing stock, but their presence is far more concentrated in parts of the Southeast. For example, the U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that investors control about a quarter of the single-family rental market in Atlanta, more than a fifth in Jacksonville, and significant shares in Charlotte and Tampa.
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Wall Street Shops in the Sunbelt
This concentration dates back to the aftermath of the financial crisis, when big investors aggressively entered a housing market flooded with foreclosures. Buying homes in bulk helped stabilize prices, especially in hard-hit areas that have seen sharp declines across the Sunbelt, according to Wolf Research.
“While overall footprint is limited, ownership is highly concentrated in Sunbelt cities, likely reflecting expectations for home price growth,” Wolf analysts said in a recent note to clients.
The idea of curbing Wall Street’s role in housing is not new. Analysts at BTIG note that Congress has seen multiple efforts in recent years to rein in institutional homeownership, ranging from tighter regulations and lending limits to outright ownership bans and even forced liquidation.
“Historically, bureaucratic limitations have hindered legislation in Congress, and currently most bills are at the ‘introduction’ stage,” BTIG said in a memo.
President Trump did not provide details on how such a ban would be implemented. The president said he would outline additional housing and affordability proposals in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in two weeks.
—CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting.
