Is Trump’s proposed ban on investor-owned homes real?
President Donald Trump’s announcement that he wants Congress to pass legislation banning private-equity ownership of single-family homes was met with a mixed reaction in Georgia — a state where institutional investors have a strong foothold.
In a Wednesday post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said he would “immediately [take] 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.
Though housing affordability will likely become a recurring bipartisan theme in the run-up to the November midterm elections, it was not immediately clear what specific policies Trump would ask Congress to pass or how a ban would work.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Trump would detail “plans to restore the dream of American homeownership” when he speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later this month.
The announcement was welcomed by some Georgia lawmakers and housing advocates, who say investor activity has worsened affordability and that some corporate landlords are squeezing and mistreating renters — opinions that mirror findings in a 2023 Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation called American Dream for Rent.
But a ban could face legal challenges.
Sen. Raphael Warnock said in an interview with the AJC that he was “glad to see the president say private equity ought to get out of housing.” He pointed to legislation he introduced, the Stop Predatory Investing Act, which addresses the same issue, and said he was waiting for Republicans to bring it to the floor for a vote.
“I’m going to say something I don’t often get a chance to say: I think Donald Trump and I agree. The question is, what is he willing to do about it?”
In 2025, Sen. Jon Ossoff announced his office had launched an inquiry into the rental practices of large, out-of-state companies such as Invitation Homes that have gobbled up single-family homes to rent.
“My office’s investigation revealed the scope of this problem in Georgia, where out-of-state companies have been buying up homes and driving up the cost of housing,” Ossoff said in a statement. “I am glad it finally has the administration’s attention, and I am eager to work across the aisle to solve it.”
Brittany Kjerstad McKnight, an assistant professor of business law at the Ness School of Management & Economics at South Dakota State University, said state lawmakers are likely to have an easier time banning investor ownership of single-family homes than the federal government because of the constitutional powers states have to regulate land use.
“Property laws are something that the states typically regulate through the 10th Amendment police power,” McKnight said. “Congress specifically would be limited in its ability to pass this law on an enumerated power within the Constitution.”
If Congress passed such a law, she said, it would likely rely on the Commerce Clause, which allows Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It could potentially face constitutional challenges under the due process, takings and equal protection clauses.
“I’m not aware of a law by Congress that has had this type of sweeping ban on an entire group from owning property,” said McKnight, who wrote a 2024 paper about proposed state bans on investor ownership of single-family homes.
After Trump’s announcement, shares of private equity firm Blackstone and Invitation Homes fell sharply. By Thursday, Blackstone’s stock was trading higher.
In a statement, industry group the National Rental Home Council said companies that rent out single-family homes represent a small share of the overall housing market and said it looked “forward to engaging with the White House and other policymakers in this important discussion.”
The Urban Institute has estimated that institutional investors own roughly 4% of single-family homes in the U.S., with small investors representing a far greater share. But housing researcher Taylor Shelton, an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University, said the issue was more nuanced in metro Atlanta.
“Metro Atlanta is the place that has been most affected — and negatively affected — by these companies across the entire country,” Shelton said. “So nowhere would stand to benefit from these kinds of regulations more so than metro Atlanta and the state of Georgia.”
Even so, Shelton said banning future acquisitions alone would not be enough and that any legislation with real impact should require companies to divest their existing holdings.
McKnight said applying a law retroactively would come with its own legal problems because of limits on the government’s authority to take property under the Fifth Amendment. A law limited to “future ownership” would have a better chance of surviving legal challenges, she said.
“If it were to have a retroactive effect, meaning that it would divest current owners of property, that would certainly raise takings clause issues.”
— Staff writer Tia Mitchell contributed to this report.
About the Author
Matt Reynolds is a housing reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's local government team.
