‘We will not become a nation of renters’: Trump vows more affordability in U.S. housing market

President Trump on Wednesday pledged to tackle housing affordability, highlighting his effort to ban large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes.

He hammered home his housing agenda a day after signing an executive order advancing his plan to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.

“They buy 500 houses, they buy hundreds of thousands. They buy 500 houses. They can take depreciation,” Mr. Trump said in a keynote speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“They can, but homes are built for people, not for corporations, and America will not become a nation of renters,” the president said. “We’re not going to do that.”

His order outlined a multi-part process designed to block institutional home purchases, though it did not immediately impose any new rules or regulations. Instead, it orders multiple government agencies to look for ways to prohibit the acquisition of homes by entities considered large in scale.

Mr. Trump said Wednesday that he’ll call on Congress to make the ban permanent. The idea has long been championed by Democrats in Congress.

Earlier this month, after Mr. Trump first proposed banning institutional investors from buying houses, Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who is usually a fierce critic of the president, introduced a bill to codify the proposal.

A housing trade group criticized Mr. Trump’s plan because it would also stop retirement funds or mutual funds from buying houses.

The National Rental Home Council, the trade association for the single-family rental home industry, said Mr. Trump should be focused on increasing supply because institutional investors make up only a small portion of the housing market.

“Professional single-family rental providers own far less than 1% of homes and are not the cause of America’s housing shortage,” the group said in a statement. “Our country needs more housing investment.”

In recent days, Mr. Trump floated new ideas to address soaring housing prices. He proposed allowing Americans to withdraw money from their 401(k) retirement funds and has ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase more than $2 billion in mortgage bonds.

Mr. Trump told the Davos crowd that he doesn’t want to expand housing supply because it would lower home values for people who already own homes. He said a better path forward would be to lower interest rates because it would fuel demand while also leaving home values untouched.

The president’s comments contrasted with his 2024 campaign promise to address housing affordability by increasing supply and reducing red tape that delays or hampers builders.

“Homeownership has always been a symbol of health and vigor of American society, but that goal fell out of reach for millions of people in the Biden era because interest rates went up so high,” Mr. Trump said in Davos. “I’m taking action to bring back this bedrock of the American dream.”

Blackstone, the largest private-equity owner of apartments in the U.S. with more than 230,000 units, has spent billions of dollars in recent years purchasing real estate companies such as Tricon Residential, American Campus Communities and AIR Communities.

However, no one is sure how much of the overall housing market is owned by institutional investors. Some estimates have put the total figure around 2% or 3%, but in hot real estate markets such as Phoenix, Miami or Las Vegas, the amount can be as high as 20%.

Sun Belt cities have been a particular target for institutional homeownership. A 2024 analysis by the Government Accountability Office said large institutions owned 25% of rental homes in Atlanta, Georgia, and 18% in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Home prices have soared by more than 50% since 2019, and the median home price has risen to $409,200. In response, home buying has declined over the past three years amid rising mortgage rates and housing costs.

Institutional investors are able to purchase homes with all-cash offers and have the money to conduct renovations, so they rarely argue with sellers about repairs or upgrades.