“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans,” Trump wrote last week on his social media platform Truth Social.
“It is for that reason, and much more, that 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,” he continued. “People live in homes, not corporations. I will discuss this topic, including further Housing and Affordability proposals, and more, at my speech in Davos in two weeks.”
Read in a bubble, it sounds as if ripped right out of the left-wing playbook. Read more critically, it’s a perfect example of Trump’s populist approach to capturing the votes of middle America.
Either way, there is a genuine concern that institutional investors are a blight on the US property market.
Research from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, published in 2023, right in the middle of President Joe Biden’s term, shows that institutional investors (LLCs, LLPs, REITs, private equity funds with large portfolios) own a growing share of single-family rental homes.