Jan 20 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to restrict large institutional investors from competing with individual homebuyers in an effort to make housing more affordable, the White House said.
“To preserve the supply of single-family homes for American families and increase the paths to homeownership, it is the policy of my Administration that large institutional investors should not buy single-family homes that could otherwise be purchased by families,” Trump said in the order.
Trump, under pressure to address voter affordability concerns ahead of congressional elections this year, has recently pushed a number of major policy proposals aimed at boosting home ownership and reining in living costs.
Earlier in January, Trump ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds to bring down housing costs.
Trump’s order on Tuesday directs his administration to promote home sales to individual buyers, restrict federal programs from facilitating sales of single-family homes to Wall Street investors and review acquisitions by large investors.
DOJ, FTC TO REVIEW LARGE DEALS
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission will “review acquisitions by large investors for anti-competitive practices and prioritize enforcement against certain of those practices by institutional investors in the single-family home rental market,” according to a fact sheet released by the White House.
The order instructs federal agencies to allow individuals and other non-institutional investors to buy foreclosed properties ahead of investors.
The White House will also prepare legislative recommendations to codify policies to prevent large institutional investors from acquiring single-family homes.
Wall Street institutions such as Blackstone BX.N, American Homes 4 Rent AMH.N and Progress Residential have bought thousands of single-family homes since the financial crisis of 2008 led to a wave of home foreclosures.
By June 2022, institutional investors owned around 450,000 homes, or about 3%, of all single-family rental homes nationally, according to a 2024 study by the Government Accountability Office.
A move by Trump to target Wall Street landlords would align him with Democrats, who for years have criticized corporate homebuying, claiming it has helped stoke housing costs, and have unsuccessfully pushed bills to crack down on the trend.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Scott Malone and Michael Perry)
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