Trump Restricts Wall Street Home Purchases But Exempts Build-to-Rent Communities

Executive Order Targets Corporate Competition

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday stopping Wall Street investors from buying and owning single-family homes, arguing the practice has priced American families out of homeownership and turned neighborhoods into corporate assets rather than places to live. "People live in homes, not corporations," the president wrote in the executive order.

Trump said "large" Wall Street investors have bought a "growing share of single-family homes," creating competition with "hardworking young families" who "cannot effectively compete for starter homes with Wall Street firms and their vast resources." "Neighborhoods and communities once controlled by middle-class American families are now run by faraway corporate interests," Trump continued.

The order directs multiple federal agencies to limit federal support for such purchases and calls on the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to step up antitrust scrutiny of large institutional investors in the housing market. Trump's order on Tuesday directs his administration to issue guidance within 60 days to impose restrictions on the sale of single-family homes.

Key Carveout for Purpose-Built Rentals

The order allows for "appropriate, narrowly tailored exceptions" for build-to-rent communities that are "planned, permitted, financed, and constructed as rental communities," a provision aimed at preserving legitimate rental development. Notably, the order includes a narrow but explicit carve-out for build-to-rent communities that are planned, permitted, financed and constructed as rental developments. That language provides clarity for purpose-built BTR developers, while appearing to exclude bulk purchases of homes within for-sale subdivisions.

Trump's executive order on Tuesday includes an exemption for 'build-to-rent' communities: neighborhoods of newly constructed single-family homes produced specifically to be rented out. Developers argue that investors of build-to-rent properties don't compete with individual home buyers and instead help people live in pricier neighborhoods where they cannot afford to own.

The specifics of how it might be implemented are not yet clear, however, including how the terms "large institutional investor" and "single-family home" will be defined—which the order gives Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent 30 days to determine.

Limited Market Impact Expected

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. Firms that own 100 or more single-family homes control roughly 2% of the nation's single-family housing stock, according to John Burns Research and Consulting.

Experts tell TIME that they expect the move to have only a small effect, saying that its scope is limited and it doesn't address the issues most responsible for high housing prices. "This executive order appears to be fairly benign in practical terms," says Tobias Peter, a co-director at the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center.

But that doesn't solve the core affordability problem, which is that there simply aren't enough homes for sale," Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at the real estate brokerage firm Redfin, tells TIME in a statement. "The real problem is that we've added far more households than we've built single-family homes," Jay Parsons, an analyst who tracks rental housing and development trends, tells CNBC Make It.

Future Legislative Plans

Trump also signaled the action is intended as more than a temporary measure, directing senior White House staff to prepare legislation to make the policy into law. Within the White House itself, it instructs several officials to develop legislative recommendations to codify the order's goals. U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, has said that he would introduce legislation to implement Trump's ban on large investors. In an interview last week, however, he said that legislation was still in early stages and would take at least 60 days.

The order represents a rare bipartisan issue, as 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. Whether this executive order will meaningfully address housing affordability remains to be seen, with experts suggesting that increasing housing supply remains the more pressing challenge facing American homebuyers.