U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration is moving to ban Wall Street from investing in 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, Trump said he was taking immediate action and would ask Congress to codify the measure, adding he would also be discussing additional housing and affordability proposals in a speech at the Davos World Economic Forum.“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” Trump wrote, going on to add that inflation had put that dream out of reach for many Americans.
“People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump said.
Wall Street blamed for reduced housing supply
Wall Street institutions such as Blackstone have bought thousands of single-family homes since the financial crisis of 2008 led to a wave of home foreclosures.
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They are increasingly putting cash into rental homes, which have fared better than other commercial property sectors such as office and retail, through a period of soaring borrowing costs and changing working patterns.
Wall Street’s expansion into home ownership has attracted criticism from housing advocacy groups and lawmakers, including Democrats, who say institutional landlords have reduced housing supply and stoked rent inflation.
Homebuilder shares dropped sharply after Trump’s comments. Housing acquisition company American Homes 4 Rent dropped to a near three-year low of $28.84 and was halted for volatility before trading resumed. Its shares were last down nearly 6% at $30.61. Blackstone shares hit a one-month low of $147.52 and were last down about 4.5% at $155.33.
The PHLX housing index was down 2.3% on the session, on track for its biggest daily percentage drop since November 17.
Blackstone did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Wall Street landlords dispute that their investments have stoked inflation and hurt housing supply. In a January research note, Blackstone said institutions own only 0.5% of all single-family homes in the United States.
It was not immediately clear what legal authority Trump would draw upon to impose such a ban on the private market purchases of houses. Trump did not detail the policy, the form it would take or the legal changes he was seeking from Congress.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The U.S. president was due to sign unspecified executive orders later on Wednesday.
Affordability Pressure
The president is under growing pressure to address voter anxiety over the cost of living ahead of midterm elections that will determine whether Trump’s Republicans retain control of Congress.
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 state of the economy.
As of November, annual shelter-cost inflation, which had shot to as high as 8.2% in the pandemic aftermath, eased to 3.0%, the lowest in more than four years, according to the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index. That is close to its average over the four years of Trump’s first term.
Home sale price increases have also eased substantially. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, headed by staunch Trump ally William Pulte, last week reported that national home sales prices had risen just 1.7% in October from a year earlier – the lowest in more than 13 years.
