President Directs Agencies to Limit Investment Firms Buying Up Homes

 

 

“President Trump accelerated his effort to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes, issuing an executive order Tuesday that laid out new steps to stop Wall Street home purchases.

 

The order directs agencies to find ways to stop the federal government from backing loans and providing other financial incentives for institutional investor purchases of single-family homes that might otherwise have been bought by an individual homeowner. The order also bans those agencies from unloading any federally owned homes to large institutional investors.

 

"My Administration will take decisive action to stop Wall Street from treating America's neighborhoods like a trading floor," Trump said in his order.

 

The order leaves a number of questions unanswered. It doesn't address immediate steps for implementation. Instead, Trump is asking his White House staff to put together "a legislative recommendation" to codify this ban through Congress. And Trump has yet to define who qualifies as a "large institutional investor" and what counts as a "single-family home." He directed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to come up with those definitions in the next 30 days.

 

In addition, Trump this month said the government-backed mortgage-finance companies would buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds in an effort to lower mortgage rates. He will also issue a new plan for letting Americans tap their 401(k) retirement accounts for a down payment on a home without penalty, a senior White House official said.

 

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) has said he would introduce legislation to implement Trump's ban on large investors. In an interview last week, he said legislation was in early stages and would take at least 60 days.

 

Trump's plan includes an exemption for "build-to-rent" communities: neighborhoods of newly constructed single-family homes produced specifically to be rented out.

 

Wall Street's presence in the housing market expanded after the subprime mortgage crisis exploded in 2007. But institutional investors have never owned more than a small slice of the overall housing market: around 2% to 3%, by some estimates.” [1]

 

1. U.S. News: President Directs Agencies to Limit Investment Firms Buying Up Homes. Picciotto, Rebecca.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 22 Jan 2026: A3.