Democrats Welcome Trump’s Push to Limit Corporate Ownership of Single-Family Homes

Democrats on Capitol Hill have found a rare point of agreement with President Donald Trump after he announced plans to pursue a ban on purchases of single-family homes by large corporate firms.

In 2025, Democrats have introduced nearly a dozen bills aimed at halting or limiting large corporate ownership of single-family homes, but a lack of Republican support has left the legislation in limbo.

“For years, I’ve raised the alarms on wealthy out-of-state investors gobbling up single-family homes, pricing too many of our neighbors out of the chance to own a home and invest in their communities,” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin said in a statement to NOTUS. “I’ll work with anyone serious about cracking down on Wall Street using Wisconsin communities to turn a quick profit while my constituents struggle to find housing they can afford.”

Many Democrats have campaigned on similar promises in recent years, with multiple bills in the last Congress targeting corporate investment in single-family homes. But given the Republican majority in Congress, those efforts seemed all but dead until Trump surprised many last week when he declared on Truth Social that he would be “immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes.”

“I will be calling on Congress to codify it,” he added.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, has supported multiple bills in the last year that attempt to limit corporate ownership of housing stock through tax restrictions.

When asked if she would support similar legislation drawn up by Republicans in response to Trump’s newfound interest, Warren’s team referred NOTUS back to her initial response to Trump’s comments.

“Donald Trump has not yet lifted a finger to bring down housing costs for Americans. I’ve been advocating for years to limit Wall Street from buying up America’s homes,” the statement said. “Enough talk – Trump should start with getting his own party in the House to support a bipartisan bill to bring down housing costs that passed the Senate unanimously. And Congress should work on legislation to stop corporate investors from buying up homes.”

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, in a post to X in response to Trump’s announcement, Merkley said this was “exactly” what he proposed in his “Humans Over Private Equity Homeownership Act.”

Introduced in February, Merkley’s bill targets institutional investors with a tax on newly acquired single-family homes and imposes a cap on the number of single-family units a major corporation can hold at once.

“Houses in our communities should be homes for families, not a cash cow for hedge funds,” Merkley posted. “Republicans killed my amendment on this last year. Let’s hope we can get this to the finish line now.”

Trump’s second administration has tried to make “affordability” a major plank in its policy platform, though housing policy has not been a major focus thus far, despite a reported shortage of more than 4.7 million single-family homes and a lack of affordable housing.

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who cosponsored Merkley’s legislation to ban corporate homeownership, said in a statement to NOTUS that it’s difficult to take Trump’s social media posts seriously.

“Trump’s random posts are not serious policy, and whatever he says related to housing means nothing as long as his ICE henchmen keep terrorizing and abducting so many of the people who actually build houses in America,” Wyden said in a statement to NOTUS. “The labor shortages he’s causing in the construction industry are a disaster for housing costs.”

Since assuming his role in February, Housing Secretary Scott Turner has quickly reshaped the department’s priorities, cutting the department’s staff and taking steps to limit transgender people and immigrants’ access to homeless shelters. Trump’s signature domestic policy, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” that passed over the summer, called for funding cuts for public housing, housing vouchers and other rental assistance by 43%, among other cuts to HUD programs.

At the same time, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte has focused much of his public efforts on investigating allegations of mortgage fraud by vocal Trump critics, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Over the weekend, Pulte announced he would pull back from a proposed plan to implement 50-year mortgages in an attempt to focus on Trump’s corporate ownership ban.

“What we’re going to look to do is to seek to prevent new homes from being bought by large institutions that are taking the home ownership dream away from Americans and putting it on corporate balance sheets,” Pulte told reporters Friday, noting that it was just one of “30 to 50 different ideas” being explored by the administration.

Rep. Alma Adams, who has also supported multiple bills aimed at ending corporate homeownership, said in a statement to NOTUS she wasn’t clear on what motivated Trump’s recent attention to institutional ownership of housing but said she will “consider any bill introduced that addresses the crisis of corporate housing.”

“We have legislation that can address this issue now and lower costs for our constituents,” Adams said, referring to her bill, the American Neighborhoods Protection Act. “Preventing unchecked corporate housing ownership is a common sense, bipartisan plan to make housing more affordable for American families,” she added.

Rep. Ro Khanna also referred NOTUS to his own legislation, the Stop Wall Street Landlords Act, which he first introduced alongside Rep. Mark Takano in late 2024. Khanna said he intends to reintroduce his bill in the coming days.

“I hope Republicans will heed the President’s call to make this effort bipartisan,” Takano said in a statement to NOTUS. “President Trump has failed to get rising costs under control, so it makes sense that he is willing to take a big swing to try and bring housing prices back down to earth.”

Trump has yet to release any additional details about how his proposal would go into effect or be enforced, and the White House declined to list specifics about how the policy would work in practice. A spokesperson blamed Trump’s predecessor, former President Joe Biden, for high prices.

“President Trump is committed to making it easier and more affordable to achieve the American Dream of homeownership by eliminating unnecessary red tape, increasing supply, and lowering costs,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said. “President Trump is working tirelessly to undue the severe damage the Biden Administration inflicted on the American people through high prices.”

“Tune into the President’s upcoming Davos speech where he will detail his plans to restore the dream of American home ownership,” Ingle added.