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 5.6 per cent on Wednesday. Invitation Homes, a specialist investor in single-family homes formerly owned by Blackstone, declined 6 per cent after dropping as much as 9 per cent following Trump’s post.
Builders FirstSource, which supplies building products, fell 5.6 per cent, while American Homes 4 Rent, a real estate investment trust, lost 4.3 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 30 per cent of homes were bought by investors in September last year, according to data provider Cotality. But small landlords play a much larger role. Big investors who own more than 1,000 homes made just 2.5 per cent of purchases.
Trump last year floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage as one answer to the housing affordability problem.
Investors on Wednesday afternoon began to sell off bonds of US real estate investment trusts, or REITs, in response to the president’s proposal.
Invitation Homes was among the worst bond performers of the day. The Texas-based group’s 2031 investment-grade notes were trading at 99 basis points above US Treasuries, 18 basis points wider than Tuesday’s market close, according to MarketAxess.
Blackstone founder and chief executive Stephen Schwarzman is a longtime supporter of Trump and has served as an informal adviser.
While he did not initially support Trump’s third run for the White House, he endorsed him in May 2024 and donated $40mn to Republican candidates and Trump-aligned Super Pacs, according to OpenSecrets, making him among the biggest political donors of the 2024 cycle.
Additional reporting by George Steer, Lauren Fedor and Michelle Chan
