When President Trump said he wanted to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes, it sounded, to many Americans, like a dream come true.[i] After years of watching Wall Street contribute to rising prices in the housing market, the idea that the White House can “ban” Wall Street from buying homes feels like a long-awaited relief.[ii] But headlines are not law. So, could the President do this alone? That question, however, only accounts for part of the problem.
In reality, Wall Street’s presence is much more prominent in multifamily housing.[iii] Wall Street landlords have shown the greatest ability to raise rents, impose fees, and standardize eviction practices in large apartment complexes that dominate many cities.[iv] Private equity firms now own around 2.2 million apartment units, which make up roughly 10% of the U.S. multifamily market, with much higher concentration in metropolitan areas.[v] Meanwhile, Wall Street’s presence in single-family homes accounts for 3% of single-family rentals nationwide.[vi] But the political debate focusing on single-family homes has surged because in the second quarter of 2025, about 33% of sales of all single-family homes were to investors.[vii] Rather than treating single-family and multifamily housing as separate problems, it would be much more productive for federal policy to address Wall Street’s influence across both markets.
Exercises of power in the housing market fall under the Commerce Clause, which grants primary authority to the legislative branch.[viii] The executive branch, however, oversees several federal agencies that exert influence over how housing is financed and regulated.[ix] Through entities like the Federal Housing Finance Agency (“FHFA”), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”), the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), the President can shape the rules that structure housing markets even without new legislation from Congress.[x]
Although the President cannot impose a blanket ban on institutional purchases of single or multifamily homes, he is not powerless.[xi] The more meaningful question is what the executive branch can do to make institutional ownership of housing far less attractive. In practice, the President’s power does not lie in imposing a formal blanket ban on institutional purchases, but rather in using the tools at his disposal to discourage private equity’s role in housing without relying on Congress to act. Through existing agencies and rules, the administration could make private equity acquisitions harder to finance, less profitable, or more legally risky, all of which might dissuade institutional investors.
The FHFA regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are central to housing finance and routinely back the debt that makes large apartment acquisitions feasible to institutional investors.[xii] By tightening standards on government-sponsored enterprise (“GSE”) support for institutional buyers, the administration could make these acquisitions less accessible for Wall Street landlords, therefore reducing their grip in the housing sector.[xiii] At the same time, HUD could make access to FHA multifamily insurance contingent on keeping rent increases within reasonable, inflation-based limits while still allowing landlords to cover rising costs.[xiv] In this way, private equity ownership is not outright prohibited. Rather, the government conditions subsidized financing on tenant outcomes.
Federal assistance such as the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (“LIHTC”) was intended to benefit low-income tenants, but in practice, it has become a tool that enriches large corporations and private equity landlords while failing the tenants it was intended to serve.[xv] Market surveys and the federal data show that institutional investors provide 85% of LIHTC equity, making them the primary beneficiaries of the credit.[xvi] This becomes problematic when the LIHTC sold to investors capture a significant share of the subsidy rather than flowing those benefits to tenants by providing lower rents or better living conditions.[xvii] Rather than abolishing LIHTC, the administration could redesign its incentives so that the subsidies are tied to tenant outcomes and less to investment returns. For example, Treasury could create incentives for certain benchmarks to be met and consequentially remove those credits if those benchmarks are not met over time. Additionally, policymakers could limit the proportion of a project’s equity that any single large institutional investor may control. These reforms would reduce the profitability of institutional acquisitions to better align federal support with its original purpose of expanding genuinely affordable housing.
Aside from financing, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) is already playing a narrower role by specifically targeting anticompetitive practices among the larger institutional landlords.[xviii] For example, America’s largest landlord, Greystar, recently agreed with the DOJ to stop using algorithmic rent-setting tools.[xix] The DOJ could focus on the largest landlords, using cases like Greystar to warn these Landlord Giants not to abuse their tenants for profit’s sake. Where executive authority may be most effective, however, is through rulemaking. Rather than waiting for courts to untangle whether landlords “agreed” to fix prices, FTC rulemaking could define the use of common rent-setting algorithms as an unfair method of competition.[xx] This approach would allow regulators to move past debates over intent or explicit collusion and focus instead on whether landlords adopt and rely on shared pricing tools that systematically raise rents and suppress competition.[xxi] Additionally, through the CFPB, which already has authority to police unfair, deceptive or abusive practices, the federal government could more directly target predatory debt-collection practices tied to eviction proceedings in corporate-owned rental housing.[xxii]
Although these policy tools could shape both single-family and multifamily markets, their practical impact would be felt most in multifamily housing. The President can set the direction with his recent Executive Order, but whether it delivers substantial results depends on cooperation between the FTC, housing agencies, and consumer protection regulators to supply the necessary legal tools.[xxiii] If the White House truly wants to keep Wall Street out of your neighborhoods, it should expand the scope of the Executive Order beyond single-family homes to address the multifamily market, where institutional ownership is most prevalent.
[i] See White House (@WhiteHouse), X (Jan 7, 2026, 1:05 PM), https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2008963216630796516?s=20 [https://perma.cc/ZF4X-7NA7] (“BREAKING: President Trump announces steps to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. ‘People live in homes, not corporations.’ – President Donald J. Trump”).
[ii] See Annie Lowrey, How Private Equity Is Changing Housing, The Atlantic (Dec. 8, 2025), https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/private-equity-housing-changes/685138/ [https://perma.cc/7B46-C2HD] (noting widespread concern that institutional investors’ housing purchases have driven up prices and rents).
[iii] See generally Private Equity Multi-Family Housing Tracker, Private Equity Stakeholder Project (Apr. 9, 2025), https://pestakeholder.org/reports/private-equity-multi-family-housing-tracker [https://perma.cc/3Y8E-9RPL] (reporting trends in private equity firms ownership over the multifamily housing market and associated tenant concerns).
[iv] Id.
[v] Id.
[vi] See U.S. Gov’t Accountability Off., Rental Housing: Information in Institutional Investment in Single-Family Homes, at tbl. 5 (May 22, 2024) GAO-24-106643 (showing institutional investor’s collective ownership as of mid-2022); see also Jack Kim, Trump Signs Order to Limit Wall Street Single-Family Housing, Reuters (Jan. 21, 2026), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-will-ban-large-institutional-investors-buying-single-family-homes-trump-says-2026-01-07 [https://perma.cc/EV7H-YSNC] (noting that institutional investors owner about 3% of the national single family rental stock).
[vii] See Nathan Bomey, Trump Proposes Ban on “Large Institutional Investors” Buying Homes, Axios (Jan. 7, 2026), https://www.axios.com/2026/01/07/trump-institutional-investor-home-ban [https://perma.cc/TYF7-A6ME] (reporting that institutional investors bought 1 in 3 single-family homes sold in the second quarter of 2025).
[viii] U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 3 (granting Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce).
[ix] U.S. CONST. art. II, § 3 (providing that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”).
[x] 12 U.S.C. § 4511 (establishing the FHFA); 42 U.S.C. § 3532 (establishing the department of HUD); 15 U.S.C. § 41 (establishing the FTC); 12 U.S.C. § 5491 (establishing the CFPB).
[xi] See U.S. CONST. art. II, §3.
[xii] 12 U.S.C. § 4511.
[xiii] See Heather Vogell, When Private Equity Becomes Your Landlord, ProPublica (Feb. 7, 2022), https://www.propublica.org/article/when-private-equity-becomes-your-landlord [https://perma.cc/2MPC-92XR] (describing how Freddie Mac financing has helped fuel large private equity acquisitions).
[xiv] 42 U.S.C. § 3532; 12 U.S.C. § 1713.
[xv] See Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, 26 U.S.C. § 42 (2024) (establishing investor-based tax credit structure); see also Chris Edwards, Problems with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, CATO Inst. (May 7, 2025), https://www.cato.org/testimony/problems-low-income-housing-tax-credits [https://perma.cc/YY6T-FMQK] (criticizing LIHTC inefficiencies and investor capture).
[xvi] See Lew Sichelman, Mortgage Lenders Are Key to Financing Stacks, Nat’l Mortg. Prof. (Dec. 16, 2024), https://nationalmortgageprofessional.com/news/mortgage-lenders-are-key-financing-stacks [https://perma.cc/YS7N-C9WF] (reporting that about 85% of investors in LIHTC are commercial banks).
[xvii] See Edwards, supra note xv (arguing that a significant share of the LIHTC subsidies flows to investors and developers rather than to tenants).
[xviii] See R.J. Rico, Greystar and Other Landlords Agree to $141M Deal to Settle a Rent-Setting Lawsuit, AP News (Oct. 3, 2025), https://apnews.com/article/realpage-lawsuit-rental-software-algorithm-greystar-settlement-5a52c3cea866757a508d2efa8e12d0b5 [https://perma.cc/6Y5K-7WJK] (reporting that Greystar and other major landlords agreed to settle claims that they used algorithmic pricing tools to align rents nationwide).
[xix] Id.
[xx] See generally A.J. Zimmerman & M.B. Anderson, Nefarious Algorithms: Rent-Fixing via Algorithmic Collusion and the Role of Intentionality in the Pursuit of Class Monopoly Rent, 9 URB. SCI. 315 (2025), https://www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/9/8/315 [https://perma.cc/47F3-X2F8] (explaining how shared pricing algorithms can replicate cartel behavior without explicit human agreement).
[xxi] Id at 8–10.
[xxii] 12 U.S.C. § 5491.
[xxiii] See Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Stops Wall Street from Competing with Main Street Homebuyers, White House (Jan. 20, 2026), https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-stops-wall-street-from-competing-with-main-street-homebuyers [https://perma.cc/52ZM-DRWZ] (explaining executive actions to prioritize individual homebuyers and discourage institutional purchases of single-family homes).
