Housing prices have locked millions of working- and middle-class families out of the market. Congress, prodded by President Trump, has taken decisive action with the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.
In January, on the one-year anniversary of his return to the White House, Trump signed an executive order directing his Cabinet to lay out rules banning large financial firms from buying up massive chunks of single-family housing.
Some Republicans have labeled the legislation as “Liz Warren’s bill,” but it is not. It represents exactly the kind of policy populist conservatives have longed for.
Private equity has targeted entry-level homes in fast-growing markets, paying cash to convert starter neighborhoods into permanent rental pools. The D.C. commentariat argues that institutional ownership is “small” nationally. This claim obscures the reality: the harm is local, concentrated, and immediate — precisely where young families are trying to buy.
Wall Street’s favorite targets include Sun Belt cities: Atlanta (25% of single-family rental homes owned by investors according to a 2024 Government Accountability Office study), Jacksonville (21%), Tampa (15%), Charlotte (18%), and Phoenix (14%). Other major markets include Dallas, Indianapolis, Nashville, Orlando, and Raleigh, North Carolina.
During his State of the Union address, Trump put a human face on the policy. “With us tonight is Rachel Wiggins, a mom of two from Houston,” he said. “She placed bids on 20 homes and lost all of those bids to gigantic investment firms that bypassed inspection, paid all cash, and turned all those houses into rentals, stealing away her American dream.”
He emphasized the need for permanence: “Now I’m asking Congress to make that ban permanent, because homes for people — really, that’s what we want. We want homes for people, not for corporations.”
This line captures the essence of the fight. While executive orders can be implemented, they are often short-lived. Congress makes law and must lock in what works.
Three weeks after the address, the Senate passed its version of the bill, 89-9-1. The compromise package was negotiated by Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Now it’s advancing in the House, where senators warn that gutting the compromise could kill the entire effort.
The backlash from think tanks has been swift. The American Enterprise Institute’s Ed Pinto complained the bill “would turn what has been a legal and permissible activity … into a suspect activity heavily regulated by the U.S. Treasury.” American Compass founder and chief economist Oren Cass countered that this is not a rebuttal but a basic definition of public policy.
“The observation that Congress has identified an activity that has been permissible and is proposing to give an agency authority to regulate it is not an argument against the proposal,” Cass wrote on X.com.
The Cato Institute went further, insisting it makes no sense for “corporations” to buy homes “to the detriment of other people.” The quotation marks do most of the work. Corporate money does not buy up neighborhoods out of charity.
“The interests of the American family and corporations diverge when it comes to housing prices,” Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, told the Brief. “Their interest is to increase the housing costs so they can make more money, period. And if that’s not it, they’re not a very good corporation.” (Disclosure: I serve on the APP’s board of directors.)
House Republicans have their own skeptics. Some treat the legislation as if it’s “Liz Warren’s bill,” but it is not. It is the first tangible step Congress has taken in years to confront inflated home prices and corporate churn making starter homes harder to buy — exactly the policy populist conservatives have wanted.
Some conservatives argue that Washington shouldn’t interfere, yet Washington already built the legal framework that shields institutional players from the constraints ordinary families and small businesses face. Pretending the market is “pure” now is a choice, not a principle.
While large investors do play a role in housing finance and construction, families form the foundation of stable towns, neighborhoods, and nations. A first home is how families build wealth, put down roots, and get ahead.
“Let me put this in a way Republicans can understand,” Schilling said with a grin. “We need a preemptive strike against the corporations that are jacking up our housing prices.”
Corporate ownership of single-family homes isn’t a passing blip. It’s a growing problem — and one Congress can start addressing now if House Republicans back the president and pass the Senate’s proposal.
In February, Trump declared: “My administration will take decisive action to stop Wall Street from treating America’s neighborhoods like a trading floor and empower American families to own their homes.”
One bill won’t fix the housing market problem. But Congress can take a first step — proving it still knows the difference between market orthodoxy and the American dream.
