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US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes

• lif 9mo ago
  What about the many, many thousands of homes that have already been bought up?
  • Simulacra 9mo ago
    I'm not sure if they could be forced to sell those, the government could, but then that would fall under just compensation seizure. I'm not a lawyer, but it would seem under basic legal theory that you couldn't take those homes.
    • causal 9mo ago
      The Comrade Trump memes would go crazy
    • Octoth0rpe 9mo ago
      Not that I expect this particular strategy from this administration, but there's 'forced' as in "you WILL sell this property", and there's 'forced' as in "any corporate owned housing unit will see its property tax rate increase by 25% per year until it is sold to a person". I don't think your description could apply to the latter.
  • seydor 9mo ago
    If they cannot be resold to other speculators their price can go waaay down
    • Aurornis 9mo ago
      The vast majority of home purchases aren't from speculators or institutional investors. Institutional investors only own about 0.5% of homes. If they're forced to stop buying, nothing will really change in a noticeable way. At best, small landlords and investors will scoop attractive properties up for slightly less.
      • Octoth0rpe 9mo ago
        > Institutional investors only own about 0.5% of homes Where they buy those homes matters though. In areas with lots of jobs/growth (often the areas experiencing the most housing price pain), that number is likely much higher.
      • antonymoose 9mo ago
        Is that 0.5% a uniform distribution across the United States or is it concentrated in a handful of hot markets? I suspect the latter and have to imagine some distortion must be occurring in those regions.
      • ntonozzi 9mo ago
        Maybe the best part of this legislation will be that people will realize it's not institutional investors that are driving up home prices. No, that's far too optimistic.
        • tbrownaw 9mo ago
          When this doesn't make anything better, the conclusion won't be that it was a bad idea but that it somehow didn't go far enough.
          • ntonozzi 9mo ago
            Home affordability is getting better anyways, which is great, because we are finally having a surge in new & denser home building in popular regions and there mortgage rates are more reasonable than they were in the COVID-era.
    • xadhominemx 9mo ago
      Nonsense. Do you think these landlords intentionally overpaid for the properties? They are sophisticated entities who like to pay at or below fair value.
      • roywiggins 9mo ago
        It happens https://www.npr.org/2021/11/03/1051941654/zillow-will-stop-buying-and-renovating-homes-and-cut-25-of-its-workforce https://www.npr.org/2021/11/03/1051941654/zillow-will-stop-b...
      • olyjohn 9mo ago
        It's pretty simple, you overpay for something if you suspect it will be worth even more in the future.
    • usefulcat 9mo ago
      The only way that prices could go waaay down is if the supply of new homes increases or demand decreases (or some combination of both). Which of those do you think is likely as a result of the proposed action, and why?
  • aagha 9mo ago
    Great point. Those homes need to be back on the market for housing prices to come down.
    • hypeatei 9mo ago
      These homes going back on the market wouldn't make a dent in housing prices. As much as we'd like to think that corporations are to blame, that's not reality. Plenty of middle class families own homes and vote for local politicians to keep their investment safe (and for it to increase in value) by making it hard to build.
    • jeffbee 9mo ago
      Your housing affordability plan is that everyone who rents from a corporation gets evicted?
  • bdcravens 9mo ago
    IF it results in dramatic reduction of home prices, this sounds great at first, but in actuality, it throws the market into disarray, since many sellers and also buyers, and it may trap home owners who need to sell into bankruptcy.
    • potato3732842 9mo ago
      God forbid someone not sell out of their home. /s Home ownership isn't exactly a crappy life milestone to be stuck at. Yeah it would suck for a select few people who need to get out of one and into another RFN due to life reasons and surely some municipalities would leverage that to really screw people but I think the upside is orders of magnitude higher than the downside. Come to think of it, I bet making homes less liquid would knock the divorce rate down more than anyone wants to believe it would, lol
      • deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
  • standardUser 9mo ago
    Tax vacant properties. To high heaven.
• downrightmike 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • rdtsc 9mo ago
    So what should be done instead?
    • johnbellone 9mo ago
      Until congress actually does something all of this is simply hot air. I do not see how this could be implemented (other than some kind of tax) and pass muster with a conservative SCOTUS.
      • postflopclarity 9mo ago
        SCOTUS does whatever trump tells them to, so..
        • downrightmike 9mo ago
          Yup, so only about bribes
  • lenerdenator 9mo ago
    "This is gonna happen... unless..." Manufacture a crisis only you can solve, for the right price.
  • montyanne 9mo ago
    [dead]
• ceejayoz 9mo ago
  Actual title: "US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes, Trump says" Trump, notoriously, says all sorts of things. I'm sure this'll come right after he finishes his healthcare plans in "two weeks".
  • frogperson 9mo ago
    Im sure this will be rolled back 2 days after mid-terms.
    • xp84 9mo ago
      I see the Democrats are right back in their 'wildly overconfident' phase again.
• wewewedxfgdf 9mo ago
  Wow. Usually everything is about the money.
  • kakacik 9mo ago
    Now its about elections, which are about power. And subsequently money
• delecti 9mo ago
  I get that title length is limited, but the "Trump Says" in the title is a pretty significant detail. He "says" things all the time.
  • Simulacra 9mo ago
    That's true, but to play devils advocate for a second, just because he says something doesn't make it wrong or bad. Banning Wall Street from buying single-family homes is a great thing that I completely support, and I don't really care which president makes it happen.
    • donkey_brains 9mo ago
      The point is that leaving off “Trump says” makes it sound like something that will actually happen.
    • shadowgovt 9mo ago
      It also doesn't mean he can actually do it. There's no obvious mechanism by which this can be enforced without a law from Congress, and it's not entirely clear such a law would be Constitutional (they'd have to base it in the right of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce if they're going to base it in anything, which presupposes an interstate market for shelter, and there's a reasonable argument to be made that maybe that's not a thing; housing is a local concern, and home prices in Topeka don't impact me, a buyer in Boston, if I want to live in Boston).
    • delecti 9mo ago
      The policy would be great! You aren't playing devil's advocate for what I said. I wasn't talking about the merits of the policy at all. Him saying it just doesn't have any connection to whether the policy will ever exist. The headline without that detail is wrongly implying certainly that isn't warranted.
  • EA-3167 9mo ago
    What baffles me is why people still take it all seriously, we've had well over a decade to examine his patterns of behavior and the takeaway is that fully 99.999% of his utterances are worthless. In the rare case that his promises are turned into some shambling semblance of reality there's always plenty of warning; in the case of VZ and Maduro you had significant troop movements for months for example. Unfortunately by treating his every utterance as requiring attention he gets what he wants, the media gets clicks, bloggers get clicks, and people get to use it as part of an eternal argument over "what comes next". People here at least should be more adept at recognizing and responding to patterns.
• codyb 9mo ago
  Seems reasonable to me, a very anti Trump individual. Now deliver. And which of his buddies does this benefit? I'm trying to think if there will be ramifications to this... - Obviously forced divestment of all Wall St owned single family homes could impact housing prices which is both the point, but of course... also hurts many families borrowing power and net worth - I guess that crash could potentially have people paying lots of money for homes that aren't worth that much anymore, which sounds pretty negative - Of course... wow, would it be nice to be able to afford something in the city I love (which I doubt will be impacted by this) Of course, no clear plan here. Just Trump saying something, why wasn't the "Trump says" part kept in the headline here?
  • montyanne 9mo ago
    [dead]
  • nerdjon 9mo ago
    I am also trying to think of what else could actually be fueling this, since it sounds very... not republican. Quite literally the opposite. Like you said that also assumes it actually happens and isn't another incoherent ramble that is conveniently forgotten about or claimed he never said. I mean if its legit I will cheer it on... but I remain skeptical.
    • xp84 9mo ago
      It's mostly a made-up issue to begin with - so this would be a popular policy, easy to pass because there won't be much opposition, and it'll be easy to point to and say "We fixed that problem."
    • usefulcat 9mo ago
      The R party has changed so radically that it's hardly recognizable any more. As a result, "not republican" is no longer a very meaningful description. I think the most likely explanation is pretty simple. Whenever people are unhappy with their economic situation, at the ballot box they take it out on whoever is currently in power, logic be damned. Politicians know this.
  • 9mo ago
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• Goronmon 9mo ago
  It was not immediately clear what legal authority Trump would draw upon to impose such a ban on the private market purchases of houses. Trump did not detail the policy, the form it would take or the legal changes he was seeking from Congress. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The U.S. president was due to sign unspecified executive orders later on Wednesday. Anyways, I thought that issues with Americans being able to afford things like housing was all a hoax made up by Democrats? Why craft policies to address a made up issue?
  • exe34 9mo ago
    because he doesn't run mid-terms - states do. He's desperate.
  • Alive-in-2025 9mo ago
    It's extremely likely that the president doesn't have that power. He can disallow corporations from buying houses on a whim? I don't think so. But PR goodness has already been coming his way from the policy if there is any.
• daft_pink 9mo ago
  I’m from the government and I’m hear to help!
• roschdal 9mo ago
  There is hope for humanity.
• ggoo 9mo ago
  Believe it when you see it folks. No sooner.
• kingstnap 9mo ago
  > "People live in homes, not corporations," Trump said. Very surprisingly progressive opinions from Trump. I do completely agree though, the consumer surplus of housing should be captured by people. Not investors looking to profit. It's extremely toxic to society when investors get to eat the utility of housing.
  • GaryBluto 9mo ago
    > Very surprisingly progressive opinions from Trump. Trump does not possess many "locked-in" opinions. He can be persuaded to support anything if you are charismatic enough.
    • el_benhameen 9mo ago
      Oh come on. There are plenty of uncharismatic rich people who have still managed to persuade him.
      • toast0 9mo ago
        My friend Ben is pretty charismatic... especially when I give you several copies of his portrait.
  • smallmancontrov 9mo ago
    Individual owners drive far more NIMBY policy than corporations. The rent of land exclusivity should accrue to the public rather than to private individuals or corporations.
  • hypeatei 9mo ago
    This is not surprising at all. I'm not sure why people keep making this mistake thinking that good 'ol Republicans are flipping their script all of a sudden. MAGA is a populist movement and has a lot in common with the far left types.
• JoshTriplett 9mo ago
  One additional important detail: if this gets implemented at all, hopefully it does not affect the common practice of having a self-owned LLC owning your home. This is common for the purposes of keeping your personal name out of public records; it is far too easy to link someone's name and address, and people at risk of doxing can do this to protect themselves.
  • mc32 9mo ago
    There has to be some nuance. Companies are known to either rent of sometimes own housing for personnel who travel to other offices. Universities typically own housing as well. So maybe it’s something like it can’t be one of the main businesses of the corp to buy up residential housing as an investment tool.
    • JoshTriplett 9mo ago
      I mean, the ideal amount of nuance is to not ban this in the first place"; right now we're talking about damage control for particularly critical subsets of uses. > Universities typically own housing as well. I'd expect that argument to carry negative weight with the folks trying to do this, given the hate they have for universities in general, and the love of privatization.
      • OGEnthusiast 9mo ago
        > critical subsets of uses I don't consider rich people trying to hide their identity to be "critical" at all. Maybe having their address public will be a way to force them to act with consideration of the community instead of just themselves for once while they hide in some anonymous mansion.
        • deleted 9mo ago
          [deleted]
        • JoshTriplett 9mo ago
          > rich people What part of "people at risk of doxing" made you jump to "rich people" rather than, for instance, "people in groups commonly attacked"? > force them to act with consideration of the community By doing what, precisely? "Have you tried not being (commonly attacked group here)?"
• cyberax 9mo ago
  It might help in the long term, as it can force cities to stop densifying. And as we all know by now, densification is the leading cause of unaffordability. The US has more houses than households, but people are forced by economic forces to move into denser and denser areas. But short-term it'll hurt availability. One of the most common ways to enshittify cities is buying an SFH, demolishing it, and plopping a 3-4 apartment complex in its place.
  • iamnothere 9mo ago
    This sounds backwards? Density means more units available, which should lower costs. Supply and demand. Rentals in a dense complex are cheaper than standalone rentals or duplexes, townhomes are cheaper than SFH, etc. I don’t think cities should force density, but there’s no reason to go the other way either as long as growth is managed properly in terms of traffic, transit, and infrastructure.
    • cyberax 9mo ago
      > This sounds backwards? Nope. The ONLY way to get cheaper housing is by reducing the city population. > Supply and demand. Sigh. No. You assume that the demand is fixed. It's not. By building new housing, you _increase_ the demand. And always faster than you can satisfy it. I just love this example: Forbes 2016 - "Tokyo's Affordable Housing Strategy: Build, Build, Build", "The Great Urban Myth: 'Cities Can't Build Their Way To Affordable Housing'" Reuters 2023 - "Surging Tokyo property prices squeeze out young professionals", Japandaily 2025: "Housing Crisis: Families Struggle to Buy Homes in Tokyo" ( https://japandaily.jp/housing-crisis-families-struggle-to-buy-homes-in-tokyo/ https://japandaily.jp/housing-crisis-families-struggle-to-bu... ) > Rentals in a dense complex are cheaper than standalone rentals or duplexes, townhomes are cheaper than SFH, etc. Try to find a city where dense housing made it cheaper.
      • iamnothere 9mo ago
        Well technically that’s true, in the same sense that the only way to roll back inflation is demand destruction (and an extended recession or depression). The problem with this is that you can’t forcibly reduce population. Halting growth in one area just displaces it. This can be a good trade if the area into which growth is displaced is underdeveloped with few other potential uses. But it can also create Atlanta or Houston style sprawl, or destroy natural areas that would be better to preserve. Japan is an unusual example because most job opportunities are in a handful of areas. You can get impossibly cheap properties in the countryside but there are few jobs or young people. Properties in the city keep getting more expensive because of demand and because building codes are constantly evolving to keep up with new developments in earthquake protection. There are older urban properties available for cheap outside of trendy areas, but the cost of renovation is often too high to be worth it. There’s also a cultural stigma around older properties.
• renewiltord 9mo ago
  Interesting that Blackstone stock is the same as a week ago. Either this can't be done, or it can be done and they're exempt, or it will be reversed.
  • ameliaquining 9mo ago
    Or it won't materially impact Blackstone's business because single-family homes are a tiny sideline for them and not where they make most of their money.
• legitster 9mo ago
  Investor owned housing is a bit of a sensationalist scapegoat. Publicly traded companies account for a tiny, tiny fraction of available single family homes in the US. And so long as the tax code doesn't change, it strongly favors private/individual homeowners, and corporations only account for the margins where housing appreciates so fast or rental incomes are disproportionate to asset values. This is an easy thing for Trump to promise (after all, little family-owned real-estate developer operations like his would never be affected). But who owns the homes is not going to change the problem that Americans have underdeveloped housing supply by over a million homes.
  • agentifysh 9mo ago
    regarding public reits focusing on blackrock misses the Vancouver Model dynamic which is absolutely happening in major us markets. the issue isn't just yield-seeking corps, it's opaque shell companies (llc) using real estate as a store of value aka money laundering vehicle. vancouver showed how this decouples prices from local wages completely. the us has this exact vulnerability—anonymous delaware/wyoming llcs buying in cash, specifically in supply-constrained cities like ny or miami. this only works because of zoning. if nimbys didn't artificially cap supply, housing would be a depreciating consumer good (like in Japan) rather than a deflation-proof asset class. zoning is what turns a house into a safe deposit box for offshore capital. if the corporate transparency act that Trump vetoed is successful then I expect to see the real estate become US's top source of GDP like it is for Canada.
    • cyberax 9mo ago
      > this only works because of zoning The dynamics in the countries that don't have zoning is exactly the same. Price bubble and misery for everyone in dense cities. There will be no affordable housing in cities, whatever you do, short of nuking everything from the orbit.
  • tootie 9mo ago
    Yeah, this move is maybe a net positive, but will have a tiny impact on actual home prices. It is absolute red meat for the internet conspiracy machine though. Especially on the left. I also have no idea what statutory authority he has to enforce this. Surely it requires Congress or at least the FTC chair. And if there's enough vested opposition it's going to be challenged in court pretty quickly.
• Aurornis 9mo ago
  Even if this goes through without a mountain of loopholes and exceptions, I doubt it will have a significant impact. "Wall Street Investors" implies they're targeting large institutional ownership, which is only around 0.5% of housing ownership as cited in the article. That number is also flat-ish or maybe decreasing depending on the chart you look at, from what I recall. Outside of a few metro areas where institutional ownership is very high, I don't think this would change anything. As long as houses remain an attractive investment, non-institutional smaller investors will happily buy the properties for a few thousand dollars less than the institutions would. Anyone familiar with basic economics is pulling their hair out reading this, because there's one extremely obvious way to lower the price of building new housing: Reducing or eliminating tariffs on construction equipment and materials and ensuring a robust supply of low-cost labor.
  • danielfoster 9mo ago
    Encouraging the creation of new housing is the way to go. One thought— what percentage of new home purchases are made by large investors and is it growing? This seems like the most important metric to look at rather than existing ownership.
    • toomuchtodo 9mo ago
      There are examples of entire subdivisions being built to order for private investors to rent out. It’s called “built to rent.” https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/commercial/build-to-rent-homes https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/commercial... Corporate ownership mapped: https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/other/who-owns-america-mapping-corporate-ownership-residential-land/ https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/other/who-owns-amer... https://storage.pardot.com/153411/17634993251KmjZ4d2/whoa_mapping_corp_ownership_report_rev.pdf https://storage.pardot.com/153411/17634993251KmjZ4d2/whoa_ma...
  • reactordev 9mo ago
    The material costs are high too because of regulations that require specific lumber for framing etc. It’s more complex than just reducing tariffs and inviting cheap labor. It’s systemic red tape put in by the large builders to prevent anyone but them to be able to build. When they do build, it’s never to code. The code they themselves help write. Ryan Homes for example…
• OGEnthusiast 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • pstuart 9mo ago
    Agreed. It's important to evaluate policies regardless of the party promoting them.
• roadside_picnic 9mo ago
  The key word here is "Wall Street". And this statement is playing off a popular misconception around corporate investors buying up American houses. There has been a bit of a panic around "Investors buying up all the property!!!" With people often citing Black Rock and Blackstone as the main culprits. But most of the "investors" buying up property are individuals purchasing investment properties. Here's an article on the topic from 2023[0], a bit old but my understanding is large institutional investment in residential real estate was already starting to cool down. Black rock isn't buying up all the housing, your neighbors are. I suspect this statement, and even if it becomes an actual ban, is largely to gain wider popular support around a largely imaginary concern people have. 0. https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investors-havent-bought-44-of-homes-this-year/ https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investor...
  • xp84 9mo ago
    That sounds right. And, I have to admit, it's pretty good politics to ban a mostly imaginary thing that is a popular talking point. Since it's barely going to affect anyone, it'll be easy to pass. And it may win votes for Republicans in swing districts, since the "BlackRock bought all the houses!" line is heard much more often from the Left, meaning this is something you can show an on-the-fence voter to signal how you are against those evil Wall Street guys. I wonder if he'll be able to resist slipping in some kind of small-time grift for a family member or campaign donor, though.
    • sgc 9mo ago
      He's in real estate. Of course he has an angle. Hopefully they can get something worthwhile into the eventual bill anyways. I would hard cap how many houses anybody can own to something like 4 - whether through an LLC or otherwise. Many countries do not or did not allow foreign ownership of residential real estate. It's definitely not in the interest of any people to have their very land taken from them. In the current climate that would likely take an extremely nasty turn so it's not the best time for it, but I would be very supportive of such a measure with an exception for permanent residents and spouses of US citizens.
  • 9mo ago
• throwmeaway820 9mo ago
  Pure populism. If you believe that banning investors from buying SFHs will decrease the price of SFHs, why not also ban investors from buying apartments/condos?
  • jimkleiber 9mo ago
    You mean like apartments/condos in Trump Tower? Ha. I wonder if banning them from buying SFHs actually decreases the supply of SFHs and shifts people to build more, guess what, apartments/condos that Trump can put his name on and sell to institutional investors.
    • sigwinch 9mo ago
      Look into Trump Ocean Club in Panama. Openly popular for drug cartel money.
• georgeburdell 9mo ago
  This will help out home prices in a lot of lower priced markets, but do little in higher priced markets. In the Bay Area, many houses are bought up by non-occupying internationals. I've been in a couple of such houses. It's bizarre walking into a $5M+ hilltop mansion that's completely bare inside except for a token "student" living out of one room.
  • mattmaroon 9mo ago
    Banning people from other countries buying home is both more sensible and more practical than this, which is why very many countries do it.
    • 63 9mo ago
      "From" other countries is overly broad and I assume not what you intended. I am actually interested though in the idea of legislating how frequently home owners have to actually be within range of the home, for example. A friend has had a hell of a time with a landlord in Malaysia who's never seen the property.
      • linuxftw 9mo ago
        Many countries prohibit non-citizens from owning any real estate or businesses at all, even if they have a long-term resident status. Thailand is one example. Ownership is limited to 49%, a local partner must own at least 51%.
        • rsanek 9mo ago
          does that work out in their favor in the end? seems like that would really deter investment in the country. I'm not familiar with any large thai corporations.
      • charcircuit 9mo ago
        Someone from another country taking ownership of land in your country is practically an invasion.
• mountainb 9mo ago
  There is a conservative case for this in that the 30 year fixed mortgage, combined with all of the foreclosure protections both old and new, amount to a government benefits program. Historically, this type of mortgage was developed to promote family homeownership. The mortgage systems have continually blown up in "crises" in part because it's a product of policy more than it is a market product. This is partly why investors both corporate and small flipper types actually do cause serious distortions: the US housing market is a welfare program first and a market for bundled land and houses second. No one wants to abolish this welfare program (you would have an easier time abolishing Social Security), but also the government wants to keep the trappings of a market price system. It is easier to have serial crises and to blame some guys for the predictable explosions every time, adjust the laws to create enormous numbers of lawyer billable hours nationwide, and then set the stage for the next crisis and the next round of patsies to be blamed. Fortunately, this time we have AI to write all the think pieces about what it really means.
  • hypeatei 9mo ago
    I mostly agree with your comment except the part where flipper types and corps cause distortion because they have 30-year mortgages at their disposal. A fixed rate, 30-year is distortionary on its own; it's a uniquely American "product" and banks in other countries would look at you crazy for requesting such a thing.
• Electricniko 9mo ago
  I wonder if this would include the real estate investment startup that Jared Kushner co-founded.
• asimpleusecase 9mo ago
  Seems like a good start. Then ban this as an asset class for scale investors so they have to release existing inventory.
• kleton 9mo ago
  They will continue trading the ones they have as LLC holding companies.
  • antonymoose 9mo ago
    This guy wholesales ;) I recently worked on an MVP for a Zillow-for-wholesale startup. As a curveball, our state passed a law restricting where and how these contract-to-buy sellers operate. So their workaround, after consulting lots of lawyers, was to provide a standardized LLC / Contract flow such that you’re no longer marketing a house for sale. You’re marketing a stake in an LLC, only that LLC has a sole purpose (a contract to option out a specific house).
    • deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    • kleton 9mo ago
      I didn't know about this use-case. But this is also what investors do with real estate in California because Prop 13 resets the taxable value on a real estate sales, but not on buying an LLC that holes the real estate.
    • Vicinity9635 9mo ago
      [flagged]
  • cmxch 9mo ago
    Then expand the definition and scope to make it more painful to circumvent. Describe the structure such that it’s hard to not be able an individual non-investing homeowner. Of course that’s unpopular to those who want to freely commit to bad practices.
• jodah 9mo ago
  This is excellent news if it can actually be enforced.
• tbrownaw 9mo ago
  So if you aren't staying long enough to want to deal with a mortgage, you'll be stuck with an apartment only?
  • jeffbee 9mo ago
    [flagged]
  • barbazoo 9mo ago
    If you don't want to own, you rent, is that what you're saying?
• primer42 9mo ago
  "Trump says" is not the same as "US will" Trump says a ton of things that he never ends up doing.
  • sigwinch 9mo ago
    You’d think he’d want his name on a bunch of homes. Similarly, some salesman on the golf course has surely already pitched his name on a bunch of homes. I bet there’s a reason he’s been uninterested for so long.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• michaelteter 9mo ago
  Will not happen with the current administration. Like so many other big promises, it will appease a lot of people, but there will be no real follow through. Any regulation that prevents unrestrained capitalism is immediately decried as socialism and therefore evil. These kinds of promises are made which temporarily create market volatility, and once it later (usually quite soon) becomes clear that the big thing will not actually happen, the markets snap back. At this point, it’s incredibly likely that these situations are manufactured to both look good AND create large short term investment gains for people in the know - without actually changing anything.
• 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 9mo ago
  Now ban everyone from buying them :P Tax the land
• YY4893438276 9mo ago
  Trump will get the boss call from Jamie Diamond or any of his other donors and quietly drop this, or sneak in a loophole big enough to walk an elephant through.
• chasd00 9mo ago
  idk how this would work effectively. There's lots of affordable homes they're just located where no one wants to live. You'd have to focus on HCOL locations and make them not so high cost which seems something that should be done at the local level. You can increase supply but investors would just snatch them up. Maybe the feds could put a cap on the value of a single-family home that an institution can own and then make ownership very tedious. For example, no institution can own a home valued at more than $500k and for each home owned a quarterly filing must be made in person at the county the home is located. I'm sure these organizations would rather own very high value homes than lots of low value ones out in BFE.
  • only-one1701 9mo ago
    Just tax non primary residences at a much higher rate. Housing crisis solved.
    • anal_reactor 9mo ago
      Capitalists hate him! Use this one weird trick to...
    • HeyLaughingBoy 9mo ago
      They already are.
      • kccqzy 9mo ago
        Not enough. Things like 1031 exchanges should be removed from the tax code.
      • smileysteve 9mo ago
        Only on a local level. And businesses can already expense that tax, so it's 20% off, while individuals have been subject to the SALT cap
      • only-one1701 9mo ago
        Clearly, not enough!
• raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  If I were renting a house, I would much rather deal with a business than an individual landlord. On another note, it’s amazing that in only a year, we accept a dictatorship where we are okay with the President setting policy that should require a law to be passed.
  • commandlinefan 9mo ago
    If I were a business whose interest in owning houses was banned by legislation, I'd sell my "services" to the individual landlords who now owned the rental property. Blackrock manages the financial part (taking rent, scheduled repairs) and the silent partner gets a cut.
    • raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      That’s already a thing. Property Management companies charge landlords around 50% of the first month rent for a new tenant and 10% of the rent to manage the property for the landlord. They also charge a lease renewal fee.
    • cmxch 9mo ago
      Then expand the scope to include all interested parties in the chain, whether owners or service providers.
      • raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
        So now you’re going to make it illegal for individual landlords to use external property management companies?
  • m4ck_ 9mo ago
    I've dealt with both; anecdotal but I had a much better experience with the individual landlord than corporate. Ex: AC went out in both cases; Individual land lord showed up with a replacement window unit the next day after I reported it. Corpo landleech ignored my ticket and calls for 3 days while I slept in a house that was nearly 90F inside past midnight. Corpo landleeches nickle and dime you (base rent + rent payment fee + pest control fee + trash fee + valet trash fee + fee for the service that bills water/sewage + mail room fee + others I'm no doubt forgetting) (but they only advertise the base rent), and they like to push straight up scams ( such as forcing mandatory renters insurance at 3x the market rate, expensive "benefits" packages with everything from HVAC filter delivery to credit monitoring, all heavily marked up.). The individual land lord? just a flat rent every month, no surprises. I'm sure there are plenty of horror stories about individual landlords though; the same greed drives both to cut corners and maximize profits.
• mattmaroon 9mo ago
  There will be no way to enforce this such that “Wall Street” can’t easily get around it, so it is clearly for show and not an actual attempt to solve a problem.
• jajuuka 9mo ago
  This is another non-solution from Trump. Similar to the "no taxes on tips" nonsense that applies to almost no one since the cap is so high. It's a populist move that doesn't address the problem but appears to be a good thing for working class people at first sight.
• siliconc0w 9mo ago
  Yet again the Trump admin identifies an issue but misses the nuance. We want investors to encourage more homebuilding, the problem is more regional concentration - in regions where PE owns a big enough % of the homes that they can monopolize and control the rents. Or NIMBY policies (where the federal government could dock funding to states that don't build to match population growth).
• guywithahat 9mo ago
  Why do they not link Trumps posts? I would really rather be able to see what he said, and this was something he posted online to truth social Edit: I think this was the post https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115855059527504524 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1158550595275... I guess they didn't link it because it changes the meaning of the article, his post reads more like he's going to discuss it and wants to do something about it.
• rgmerk 9mo ago
  It will make very little difference in the end. Australia's land tax system makes it effectively impossible for large corporations to own large chunks of residential property, but our real estate is amongst the world's most expensive and landlords are still awful - it's just that the landlords are hundreds of thousands of dentists and, yes, software engineers rather than corporate entities. If you want housing to be cheaper and renters to be better treated, increase supply. Everything else is window-dressing.
  • lewdev 9mo ago
    > It will make very little difference in the end. I feel like there will be a difference between a handful of large corporations owning a majority of properties vs thousands of dentists and software engineers. Are you saying that all of these property owners are also soulless profit-optimizers? I remember watching some video of tenants being priced out of their rental apartments so when they tried to contact the property owner, they found layers upon layers of managers and companies. It just seems better when there are more thousands of owners than just a handful of corporations.
    • rgmerk 9mo ago
      You would feel that, but you would be wrong. Small businesses are often just as ruthless as large ones, just less competent. In any case, most rental properties are managed through agencies, who are soulless profit-optimisers.
      • DoesntMatter22 9mo ago
        So what’s your solution exactly? No businesses at all?
        • weakfish 9mo ago
          That’s… not what they said, you’re putting words in their mouth
        • 9mo ago
• 4d4m 9mo ago
  How does this affect Arrived?
• tptacek 9mo ago
  None of this has anything to do with "affordability", which is not about shifting rentals to owner-occupied properties, but rather reducing the monthly cost of residing in areas with opportunity. The notion of home ownership as an absolute good is a driver of unaffordability.
  • tootie 9mo ago
    Yup. Building wealth through home ownership directly implies homes becoming unaffordable for new buyers.
    • tptacek 9mo ago
      Right. There are good financial reasons to own a home even if you don't think it's going to be a great investment, just as there are very good reasons not to own a home even if you have the means. It's the absolute, which is the premise of this policy proposal, that's the problem.
      • kasey_junk 9mo ago
        And home ownership rates are well within the normal range for the US post war regime! So this is a policy proposal that will likely decrease affordability to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
        • tfehring 9mo ago
          Homeownership rates are only ~flat in aggregate because the population is aging and older people are more likely to own their homes. The homeownership rates of Americans aged <35, 35-44, and 45-54 are down ~10% since 1982 and continuing to decrease. https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf
          • tptacek 9mo ago
            You just told a story about how we need to build more housing. Kasey and I agree with you about that. The point is that there isn't a distortionary corporate investment force preventing young people from doing that; what there are is zoning and permitting rules locking every desirable location into stasis.
• instagib 9mo ago
  So, REITs? There is so much money there I expect some immediate pushback or a built in loophole. Can’t buy a single home but an entire community is okay.
• dboreham 9mo ago
  Either a) this is window dressing and nothing material will change or b) there's a housing crash coming.
• websiteapi 9mo ago
  They should go all out and nationalize zoning. Let it be challenged all the way to Supreme Court. Trumps developer buddies get paid, the grift continues and the housing crisis is eliminated. Do it. Do it now.
• mellosouls 9mo ago
  I wonder if we will one day look back and wonder at the morality of a society that considered homes suitable targets for investors of any stripe.
  • tbrownaw 9mo ago
    Not unless we decide that personal mobility is evil, and start just assigning people to plots of land when they reach adulthood.
    • mellosouls 9mo ago
      Eh? I'm not talking about investing in your own home, but buying them simply as profit vehicles with no intention of living in them.
      • tencentshill 9mo ago
        They're also buying risk. It's just during the last 10 years buying a home has happened to be a fantastic investment, an easy way for an individual with the ability to get a 200k loan to turn that into 400k+ with 0 effort, especially during COVID. The market could crash and purchasing would become a risk for everyone but the wealthiest once again.
      • carlosjobim 9mo ago
        You've now reached the core of hacker news. Profiting from other people's need to have a place to live is actually great. Anybody against it is a racist and also a nazi. The real evil people are those who work and pay taxes and rent. The true heroes are the landlords. Now the dictator is trying to steal the profits from the landlord heroes. If you're a real hacker, you stand tall for the landlords and the corporate investors. Otherwise, we'll denounce you!
• eunos 9mo ago
  "Houses are for living, not for speculation" spreads to the Imperial Core
• alecco 9mo ago
  More like the housing bubble peaked and with this fund managers have a way to save face while fleecing investors.
  • crooked-v 9mo ago
    There's no bubble, there's a massive housing shortage. The only "peak" will be when prices are so high that even the rich can't pay any more, which point it'll just stay there.
• Workaccount2 9mo ago
  Well that's going to do nothing. But at least people eating the chaff of property owners will celebrate it, I guess.
• SpaceManNabs 9mo ago
  Does wall street investors include private equity? i thought i was pretty sure that is most of the problem, but maybe i am wrong.
• fleroviumna 9mo ago
  [dead]
• deadbabe 9mo ago
  What about REITs!? They are a crucial source of portfolio diversification!
• w10-1 9mo ago
  As others have noted: - Whether this is needed or helps depends not on percentage of owners or buyer/sellers, but on the effect in the market of such players. REIT's have an outsize effect because they are repeat players, and thus lucrative clients for brokers, who qualify themselves by skewing local markets accordingly. - Policy-wise, it's hard to distinguish by size: second homes, mom-and-pop with a few rentals, REIT, private equity. (This is how corporations get free-speech rights.) - Politically, it's a shame that a real problem is addressed via scapegoating - Practically, it will have little effect since REIT's and home builders are sitting on a lot of inventory that they can't sell, so they've stopped accumulating (and they're resorting to secondary offerings to pay off the original investors). Indeed, to the extent this stimulates buying, they're all for it. - Ethically, the US has been a magnet for money laundering, much of it via real estate, which has pushed up asset prices and de-conditioned professionals. Scapegoating only delays reform.
• jspaetzel 9mo ago
  They should just increase the taxes on rental income to make it less profitable. It's too easy to be a bum landlord.
  • Ifkaluva 9mo ago
    The landlords would raise the rent to pass the tax along? If all landlords have this tax, all landlords will be raising rents.
• christkv 9mo ago
  Corporations can build their own buildings and rent them out, keep them out of the second hand market.
  • klipklop 9mo ago
    They are already doing this. They build entire SFH communities exclusively for rent. Nobody even has an opportunity to buy them. Build to rent, etc.
• rssoconnor 9mo ago
  I don't actually know anything, but I've been wondering lately: is higher house prices simply a consequence of Baumol's cost disease? If so, then there is kinda nothing we can do about it, right?. Higher house prices is simply a consequence of improved productivity elsewhere, and thus it is necessary to spend a larger fraction of one's income on housing.
  • crooked-v 9mo ago
    Higher house prices in the US are a consequence of literally every major US metro area having a shortage of housing (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives/us-housing-shortage https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...). There's no mystery here, just that a lot of people decided to shoot themselves in the foot starting in the 1970s by putting more and more zoning and permitting limits on new housing construction.
• tootie 9mo ago
  Headline is very misleading. Reuters prefaces this with "Trump says" which is weaselly enough. Quote from the article: "In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was immediately taking steps to implement the ban which he would also call on Congress to codify in law." The president can't do this. His EO will likely be some kind of statement of intent or request to the FTC to see what can be done. Really, this is an exhortation for Congress to do something. A bill has yet to be written.
• Glyptodon 9mo ago
  Just build more housing, the whole "let's make rules to avoid the easy and obvious solution" trend annoys me.
  • standardUser 9mo ago
    Utilizing vacant properties is easier and cheaper than building new ones, by a massive margin. We should do both, but ignoring perfectly good homes in desirable locations being used by nobody is silly.
    • thekyle 9mo ago
      If the goal is to reduce the number of vacant homes, then why not create a tax on those specifically. Corporate owned homes and vacant homes are not the same thing at all.
      • standardUser 9mo ago
        If a home isn't the sole primary residence of a person, it's essentially "vacant" and should be taxed, imho.
    • Glyptodon 9mo ago
      I mean converting vacant is fine, to me it's the same category basically - increasing housing supply.
• tehlike 9mo ago
  Sounds like federal outreach over what is probably within states' jurisdiction.
• 7e 9mo ago
  People want the value of their house to go up after they buy it, but stay low before they buy it. This is all nonsense. If people in an area keep breeding, housing costs will go up. It's that simple. Increasing housing prices are actually one of the only checks that keep humans from overbreeding and ruining large swaths of desirable places to live.
• almosthere 9mo ago
  How about stopping all non-occupants from buying properties.
  • tacticalturtle 9mo ago
    I don’t want to purchase property, so where do I live?
    • almosthere 9mo ago
      Apartments, sorry I should have been more clear - all SFH should be owner-occupied
  • anthomtb 9mo ago
    Sounds like a terrible idea. Have you heard otherwise?
• riazrizvi 9mo ago
  This will absolutely help. It’s easy for these institutional players to downplay their involvement with select stats, to play PR defense, but platforms like Zillow work with institutional funds to sell them an information advantage that means they are at the end of the market that does the most upward impact on pricing. People don’t have a natural feel for how little you need to alter flow to cause liquidity in a system to collapse.
  • pcurve 9mo ago
    I also think this will help. There's no one size fits all solution. I hope it goes through.
  • empath75 9mo ago
    Zero chance this moves housing costs an iota. Most of those wall street owned houses are rentals. If they are forced to sell them, that is a net zero change to housing supply, because they are taking a rental unit off the market.
  • dweez 9mo ago
    There are a few markets like Jacksonville and Atlanta where there is a lot of institutional ownership, but outside of those few cases impact of Blackrock et al on housing markets is effectively nil.
  • toephu2 9mo ago
    Help who exactly? This will be good for existing homeowners because it will increase home prices and increase rents. It's bad for renters.
• oldjim798 9mo ago
  Anything bad for Wall Street is generally good for the rest of us.
• pinkmuffinere 9mo ago
  Wow this is exciting. I tend liberal, but I think this sounds like a bad policy lol. My understanding of the existing research is that rent control tends to decreases the motivation to increase supply, and I think this should do the same
  • derangedHorse 9mo ago
    Yeah if investors are no longer buying from home developers then it'll definitely limit the demand, the price homes sell for, and the motivation to build new homes. I believe that metropolitan areas are the problem and my unpopular opinion is that people have to get used to the idea of moving to sparser areas for affordable housing.
    • crooked-v 9mo ago
      More specifically, the current zoning of metropolitan areas is the problem. US cities have plenty of potential for more housing, they just won't allow it to be built. The most absurd example is here in SF, where... okay, context. A recently-passed state law overriding local zoning means that there's a high-rise building project in the Marina district (https://sfyimby.com/2025/12/preliminary-permits-filed-for-fourth-safeway-redevelopment-in-the-marina-san-francisco.html https://sfyimby.com/2025/12/preliminary-permits-filed-for-fo...) that will almost certainly get built, despite people endlessly protesting it. It will add 790 apartments, 86 of which will be required to be affordable housing. Before this, in 2024, there were 7 net housing units added for the entire year in the Marina District. No typo there, literally just 7, in the most expensive neighborhood in the city, in the most expensive city in the country. This one building, only possible because the state overrode local zoning, will be adding by itself more than 100 years worth of new housing to the neighborhood. That's how fucked the approval process is.
• dolphinscorpion 9mo ago
  "US will ban" More like Trump said today that he will try to ban...TACO and all
• wanderingmind 9mo ago
  Corporations are people under the current SCOTUS interpretation. Which means they have the same rights under the US Constitution, so this should be struck down in no time in the courts. Another nothing burger likely to end up just manipulating the equity market and the derivative markets in the short term for large investors to capitalize.
• klipklop 9mo ago
  I feel the numbers that show investment groups that own X number of homes is highly misleading. More than likely these investment groups form multiple companies when they buy up the homes. Likely state or regional. From there the larger parent company is invested. So I wonder if there are hundreds or thousands of "small" investment groups that are essentially a shell for a larger private equity group. So my big worry is that the Trump admin will say they are going to only eliminate the most obvious cases and the problem will remain. The LLCs and shell corps, etc. EDIT: Also it does not address the massive amount of housing stock that is foreign owned by people that don't even live in the country.
• gen220 9mo ago
  Churchill was right! We’ll try everything except for a land value tax, so that we can eventually prove once and for all that LVT is the right thing to do! :) But actually, it’s good to see movement on the underlying problem (affordability of home ownership). This is The Domestic American Problem of our times, and it deserves to be closer to the center of the Overton window of our politics and policy-making. Even if we think this step is kind of meaningless, it draws more attention to the problem, which is a good thing.
  • kart23 9mo ago
    Can someone please explain to me a practical way to apply the LVT? Vancouver used to have an LVT, it was too low and there was a housing speculation bubble in the early 1900s, since property was appreciating much faster than the tax rate. And if the LVT is too high, then you will have very little new development. This isn't even mentioning how you determine the value of the land. Denmark has an LVT and copenhagen affordability is... not good.
    • twoodfin 9mo ago
      As far as I can tell, LVT only achieves what it sets out to do if it’s equivalent to market rent. As in, you never really “own” your land, you’re just renting it from the sovereign. If you can’t make good enough use out of it to afford that rent, you should move on. You can find comments on this thread that make this argument explicitly in terms of “maximizing land use efficiency”. This was the economic structure of feudalism. It … wasn’t great. Private ownership of land has its own tradeoffs but a few centuries of historical experimentation in both directions has been fairly decisive.
      • spaethnl 9mo ago
        How is that LVT "rent" different from any other traditional property tax being "rent"? As near as I can tell, it is just a different way of deciding how the property tax burden is levied. Downtown property gets taxed much more. Un-developed speculation property that doesn't contribute to the community (and derives value from other people's contributions) get taxed at the same rate as nearby developed property.
• ASinclair 9mo ago
  Hopefully this happens so people can stop blaming institutional investors for high home prices once this fails to work. Then maybe we can work on actually building homes.
• gowld 9mo ago
  Submitted editorialized title in a misleading way. Correct title is: "Trump says he will ban Wall Street investments in single-family homes"
• exabrial 9mo ago
  One of rare instances I'll say it: make owning a second home a major tax liability and 0 takes breaks for building or ownership. Not that because "we have a right to housing" or other catchphrases, but because getting rid of the government sponsored local monopolies is impossible.
• micromacrofoot 9mo ago
  how is this going to help when they already own it and new housing is built at a snail's pace? investors pulling up the ladder behind them not that I expect it to even happen at all
• emodendroket 9mo ago
  Crowd pleasing policy that will not make any difference to the problem.
• ck2 9mo ago
  the carve outs will be insane and defeat the whole point absolutely, easily predictable what should be a one page bill will have riders of insanity they'll probably do it like they do with corporations having more than 15 employees, so every little business just has 15 people contracting out to the next business with 15 people etc., there will be a corporation for every 15 houses etc.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• smileysteve 9mo ago
  So close to realizing the issues with the 2018 tax bill. - 20% maximum corporate tax - Personal Salt cap Made it less expensive for an llc to buy a home than for most individuals. To make individual ownership on par with corporate, individuals need to be in a lower tax bracket, be able to deduct taxes , interest, and insurance. And the $10k cap really hurt the ability for local property taxes to make it better for the individual. The new $40k cap may put it slightly towards the individual in some jurisdictions. But raising corporate rates or reducing corporate deductible expense re real estate is the most efficient policy to encourage individual ownership.
• snowwrestler 9mo ago
  The actual headline is “Trump says he will ban Wall Street investments in single-family homes,” which is a more accurate description of what happened: one social media post by the president, asking Congress to do something. Nothing has actually changed yet.
• bighubris 9mo ago
  Reuters taking the regime seriously is weird.
• stuaxo 9mo ago
  A lot of people live in apartment complexes and this won't cover those.
• 6510 9mo ago
  I have this idea where we pick a desert road as long as possible (maybe road 50 Nevada) then build a 50 000 metric ton machine that makes large rammed earth houses. Perhaps make a mold the shape of a Ferris wheel. Have it stamp out 200 homes per week (2 miles) Road 50 is 400 miles so 200 weeks. Rammed earth is a very decent building material but if you make the walls thick and compress it hard enough (maybe add steam?) it will last hundreds of years. Other building methods should be considered ofc domed roofs are perhaps not cool enough. Disassemble the machine, ship the containers and deploy it some place else. Add some killer features to the homes so that people cant wait to live there. For the first 400 miles at least $30 billion comes out (over 30 years) or $15 bl per year for each year of construction. Should be good enough for investors. If it works, build additional improved versions. Aim for a factory that makes these machines. Something like a sane version of the line. Something like this only 20 times larger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKi8VWRDA_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKi8VWRDA_c Something like this but moving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn0g68XE3Ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn0g68XE3Ds
  • BigTTYGothGF 9mo ago
    There's a reason people don't live in that part of the world and it's not because there aren't any houses.
    • 6510 9mo ago
      The reasons people do chose to live some place are mostly man made. The reason to buy a property somewhat overlaps but not entirely. The giant machine alone delivers enough hype for some to just buy one. Take care of the boring things and lure them in with killer features. The line is/was planned to have way to many of them. In Japan real estate people already get excited if there is a subway station planned. Houses are horrifically boring all over the world. There are so many data points that people building stuff are happy when all the boxes are checked. As you've pointed out they usually follow demand but it's not a rule, it doesn't have to be that way. We do living room, kitchen, dining, bathroom, bedroom but you could do many different rooms. Say a proper office with all the trimmings perhaps a network connecting coworkers. You could do a space for home manufacturing. If you could just dock a truck properly and roll pallets in and out it would go a long way. Could do a district cooling system and/or a centralized pool pumping station. Could have a fee to gradually green the desert behind the homes. But the true killer feature is lack of red tape.
• BanAntiVaxxers 9mo ago
  It figures that by the time I can finally afford a vacation home, somebody is going to yank up the ladder.
• jonplackett 9mo ago
  Just ban corporate ownership of private homes. Ban second homes altogether.
  • jonplackett 9mo ago
    Lots of rich people here I guess.
• yalogin 9mo ago
  How is Wall Street defined? How would they enforce it? What is preventing a large corporation from registering a new company to buy every house? Also this is just a call to action, nothing written up in a law yet. We will see how it goes, if at all it's implemented.
  • fooker 9mo ago
    The modern US government runs on vibes, not definitions and enforceability! (And no, this is not a Trump thing. This has been the case for a while now.)
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• mint5 9mo ago
  Why is it as a soon as a politician announces they will start in the future to have a concept of a plan at tackling an issue, many people react as if it’s already done? No actual implementation steps have been taken or explained. Will this happen before or after the health care plans are released? Before or after the still pending infrastructure bill? “ Trump said he was immediately taking steps to implement the ban, which he would also call on Congress to codify in law. *It was not clear what steps he would take*”
• jpollock 9mo ago
  Speaking as someone who just sold a house in the Bay Area (Dec!), house prices here are very much "buying the payment". The valuation of the property goes up and down directly with the interest rate. The ROI of the house (we bought in 2016) was ~8% on the down payment over the past 10 years, excluding maintenance and interest charges. As an investment, property is not a very good one. To get that 8% on the down payment, I spent 4% on the remainder. It really doesn't net positive after the mortgage interest (with a 20% down payment). It's about "forced savings" and having control over your environment. As an aside, since people are stuck in houses (mortgage rates and prop-13), there is a definite lack of starter homes. Everyone adds the second bathroom, meaning there aren't any single bathroom homes to be found. That increases the market floor.
• next_xibalba 9mo ago
  Just build more homes. JUST BUILD MORE HOMES.
• abustamam 9mo ago
  There's a service called Arrived (I believe Jeff Bezos invested) that lets people buy fractional shares of single-family homes and earn a proportional share of the rent. If you sell, you're effectively selling your percentage of the property. As a renter, I was drawn to this as a way to get some exposure to real estate, and I ended up investing in a vacation rental. At the same time, I'm pretty conflicted about it. Profiting from vacation housing feels different to me than profiting from people’s primary shelter, which is a basic necessity. More broadly, I think as long as the incentives of property owners and renters are fundamentally misaligned, it will remain extremely difficult for middle-class folks who don't already own property to break into the market. The system optimizes for extracting rent, not for creating new owners.
  • happyopossum 9mo ago
    > Profiting from vacation housing feels different to me than profiting from people’s primary shelter, which is a basic necessity. If you believe that nobody should profit from providing housing, what do you propose as the incentives for people to build, capitalize, and maintain said housing?
    • tadfisher 9mo ago
      Well, the primary incentive today, for most people, is a place to live. Profit just skews the preference on how that is accomplished.
    • abustamam 9mo ago
      That's fair, and I'm not claiming rent disappears, or that nobody should ever earn money from operating rental housing. Some people will always need or want to rent, and providing rental housing is real work that should be compensated. The distinction I'm trying to draw is between operating housing as a service and owning housing primarily as a financial asset whose returns are driven by scarcity and leverage. In a healthier system, the incentive to own rental property would look closer to running a utility or a hospitality business: you earn steady, relatively bounded returns for providing a well-run service (maintenance, risk, capital deployment, tenant experience), not outsized returns from appreciation and from pushing rents faster than incomes. People would still buy rental properties to earn income, but the business case would be built more on operational efficiency and quality of service, and less on financial engineering, tax advantages, and asset inflation. Practically, that can show up in a lot of forms that already exist in pieces today: regulated or capped-return rental models, co-ops and shared-equity housing, community land trusts, public-private development, developer-operator splits, or tax structures that favor building and selling over hoarding and rent maximization. So I'm not saying "don’t make money on rent." I'm saying a system where most of the upside comes from perpetual control of a scarce necessity will naturally concentrate ownership and make entry harder and harder. A system where most of the upside comes from creating, improving, and operating housing can still support rentals while keeping the door open for new owners.
• pianopatrick 9mo ago
  I'd be fine with a policy of "you can rent housing you build" for American corporations. If a corporation thinks there is demand in some city, goes and build housing for that demand and then rents that housing, that is good for the world. Would be a better policy than letting corporations use their access to capital markets to outcompete individuals trying to buy a house.
  • JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > I'd be fine with a policy of "you can rent housing you build" for American corporations Builders are more concentrated than landlords in pretty much any geography. A concentration that scales with the amount of bureaucracy and bullshit required to get permits.
  • cush 9mo ago
    You can rent a home after you’ve personally owned it and lived in it for 10 years? That would cap any individual to 3-4 rentals in a lifetime
    • Seattle3503 9mo ago
      We need more rental units, and it isn't clear how that policy would help the situation.
      • atrevbot 9mo ago
        We need more houses for sales and this would incentive people to create it.
      • cush 9mo ago
        These things aren't mutually exclusive. There's a supply problem and it depends. You'd be right if there was only a demand for rentals, but people also want to buy homes to live in, and currently those people are completely priced out of the market by landlords because they've bought all the homes as investments. A landlord can buy a 10 bedroom sfh and split it up into student housing near a university (good), or they can buy a 2 bd bungalow and price a new family out of the market (bad). It just depends. It depends entirely on the market.
• felineflock 9mo ago
  The root cause for the low affordability seems to be that most people don't want to sell a house purchased at 3% interest and have to pay for a new one at 6%. That and zoning restrictions too contribute for the lack of supply.
  • cush 9mo ago
    In my area the zoning is ludicrous. Need to walk 4 blocks to visit my corner store. Tall skinny townhomes that nobody wants and go unsold for months are the only allowed high density option - with no stacked flats.
  • happyopossum 9mo ago
    There was a huge affordability problem 4 years ago when the rates were 3% too, so that’s clearly not the “root cause”. In fact, at the time HN was filled with people blaming the “free money” 3% rates for the lack of affordability…
    • felineflock 9mo ago
      LOL, you live in California? The past affordability you are talking about was not universal. There were plenty of people happily buying homes after moving out of CA to other states. Anyhow, interest rates are the root cause now. Who in their right mind would do the trade I've described?
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• toephu2 9mo ago
  This is good for homeowners. Bad for renters. Why? Housing prices will rise, rents will rise.
• shevy-java 9mo ago
  The TechBros currently run the country, so I don't buy into anything the current government does in regards to Average Joe, including family homes.
• yalogin 9mo ago
  Interesting to see that he did not issue an executive order to ban this but called on congress to do so. This is just pandering to the base and election signaling and nothing else, at least for now.
  • cush 9mo ago
    Midterm pandering, for sure
    • mexicocitinluez 9mo ago
      Just think of the shit he's going to throw against the wall when it's only a few months away. I bet he'll wade into "Cancelling all student loans" or "Legalizing Marijuana" knowing his base is too stupid to understand his intentions.
  • averysmallbird 9mo ago
    This cannot be done by Executive Order anyway.
    • mexicocitinluez 9mo ago
      That's not the point. He's issued plenty of other executive orders that aren't legal in order to continue to bullshit his base. The reason why he's deferring to congress now (instead of trying to take credit) is because he knows it's not possible and can use that as leverage against members of Congress.
• cush 9mo ago
  A clock is right twice a day
  • arealaccount 9mo ago
    At least
• insane_dreamer 9mo ago
  I'll believe it when I see it in action.
• cush 9mo ago
  Ironic this coming from the king of scummy landlords
• crooked-v 9mo ago
  As usual, the US continues to do everything possible about the housing shortage except actually building enough housing.
• Ericson2314 9mo ago
  Stupid populism. Homeownership is bad policy, and I welcome private equity buying it all so we are finally disabused of it. (Of course, they were not buying it all.)
• scoofy 9mo ago
  This headline is wrong. It’s just something Trump said and any mechanism to do this seems dubious at best. The entire idea is likely unconstitutional.
• alfiedotwtf 9mo ago
  Anyone want to bet that this will cause the Second Order effect of no more new single-family homes being built and instead move more and more future development into co-living dwellings. Given this, it’s inevitable - the New American Dream will be communal living.
• notatoad 9mo ago
  my first reaction was that the counter in the top right seemed like a really low number, but i think i was interpreting it wrong - that's the number of rides in progress, not a cumulative counter for the day, right?
• calvinmorrison 9mo ago
  Simple test If anyone thinks this is not a problem, why would they comment, it would be irrelevant as banning salmon from participating in taikwondo Instead everyone says how it's so false and this is just silly. This tells me - they are liars and it isn't silly at all
• UltraSane 9mo ago
  Housing simply cannot be both an investment AND affordable.
• botacode 9mo ago
  [flagged]
• 8bitsrule 9mo ago
  Don't hold your breath. It needs to be illegal for anyone to buy a single-family home that already owns one, and who won't agree to live in it, full-time and exclusively for at least one year. They must also agree to sell it ONLY to someone who also accepts the same terms. The penalty should be a criminal fraud charge with minimum jailtime -and- a hefty penalty.
  • phreeza 9mo ago
    Wouldn't that most likely lead to less rather than more construction of single family homes?
• jmyeet 9mo ago
  So there are (at least) six important aspects to the housing crisis. 1. Politically, this issue is a winner and it's crazy that the Democratic Party has refused to bang the drum on this, basically because it potentially upsets corporate donors. They have instead ceded this poopulist political ground to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party does not want to win elections and this should never have been more obvious than the 2024 presidential election; 2. Hoarding housing is state-sanctioned violence. You need housing to live. Housing affordability is the number one factor in homelessness [1]. That then subjects people to violence and danger that we, as a society, are allowing to happen. There is no reason that the wealthiest country on Earth can't provide a roof over the head of every man, woman and child within our borders; 3. The private sector will never solve the housing crisis because solving the housing crisis involves devaluing, definancializing and decommodifying housing. Wealthy people and large corporations who own a lot of real estate won't on their devalue their holdings. Things like Ezra Klein's Abundance claptrap are simply putting a Democratic bow on Reagan era trickle down economics and deregulation. This requires state action. That means the state needs to build significant amounts of housing to provide to people to regulate the housing market. The poster child for this policy is Vienna, Austria; 4. Voters have fooled themselves into thinking that increasing house prices are good for them. They're not. They're bad in virtually every way. There are people who bought a house for $100k in 1990 where that house is now worth $2M. Are you $1.9M richer? No. Because if you sell it what happens? You have to buy another house. And if every other equivalent house costs $2M you still only own one housing unit's worth of wealth; 5. Increasing house prices are simply stealing from the next generation and suppressing wages. Why suppressing wages? Because if you're laden with debt, you'll be a complaint little worker bee. You need that paycheck to not be homeless. You are in effect a debt-slave, particularly combined with student and possibly medical debt; and 6. The next wave of antitrust action will involve the use of AI as a means for market collusion and manipulation. A great and relevant example is RealPage [2]. If all the landlords use the same software and that software is designed to algorithmically increase rents, then that's market collusion. Honestly, dynamic pricing in general needs to be banned. [1]: https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/0... [2]: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-realpage-algorithmic-pricing-scheme-harms-millions-american-renters https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...
• johnnienaked 9mo ago
  There goes my home value
• snow_mac 9mo ago
  This is a good thing, the next step however is to block the guys that use sites like BiggerPockets.com from buying up more then 5 single family homes. I know a whole bunch of guys who own 10 or more houses. That is excessive. We need to limit all investment of single family housing. Apartment complexes? Be my guest buy all you want, build all you want. But lets keep our neighborhoods full of people who can actually live in them.
• kreetx 9mo ago
  Aren't they just fixing the symptom rather than the cause? I.e, people buy hard assets because holding dollars loses value. Make dollar hold its value instead, thus will individuals and companies stop buying up property they don't actually need.
• bendbro 9mo ago
  Even if their negative impact is a fantasy, they provide no benefit. There is no reason we shouldn't ban them.
• chaosbolt 9mo ago
  Even if they do it's a little late at this point, plus I don't believe it, since Trump and most people in the admin are too friendly (borderline controlled) by the people who are friendly/control entities like Blackrock, it's either beneficial to them to stop the competition from doing it since they bought enough for now or there is a big gotcha in there. I know how that paragraph reads, but the past couple of years have made me too cynical to trust anything they say they're going to do.
• class3shock 9mo ago
  "Real estate investors, both individual and institutional, bought one-third of all single-family residential properties sold in the second quarter of 2025" https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/07/home-sales-investors-make-up-highest-share-of-buyers-in-5-years.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/07/home-sales-investors-make-up... As long as we have this focus on using homes as investment and rent prices are kept high through collusion, the industry refusing to build "non-luxury" units, and regulation hurdles stopping new entrants, we will be stuck with this problem.
  • MagicMoonlight 9mo ago
    Rent is high because you aren’t allowed to build in high-demand areas, and it takes a huge amount of capital with limited return. If your rentoid decides to rip the copper wiring out, or not pay their rent for a year, then you’ve wiped out 10 years of profit.
  • richwater 9mo ago
    > the industry refusing to build "non-luxury" units This is a government policy failure. Because no one is allowed to build fast enough, there is always a demand for luxury (higher profit) and thus that is what gets built.
    • bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
      The government in this case being your city council
    • bombcar 9mo ago
      You have to completely satiate the demand for luxury housing before it becomes "desirable" to build new standard housing. In years past the "starter home" market has completely been reselling past housing, even what was lux at the time of building. Why would you spend your time and effort building a house that earns you $50k when for the same time and effort you could build a house that earns you $150k? You'd only do the first if the second wasn't available.
      • 9mo ago
• sameesh 9mo ago
  What about investors from other stock exchanges and locales? I don't understand why the phrase "Wall Street" is being included in this.
• cramcgrab 9mo ago
  Great news!
• xbar 9mo ago
  Actually, not a bad policy idea. But it is not enough to solve the set of problems that arise when you take a basic human need (housing) and subject it to market forces--inexorably the ability to profit from the need drives costs higher than is affordable for some "market participants," leading to death. Small investor ownership in single-family homes (for both short- and long-term rentals) have been devastating to communities. What is the right number of single-family homes to permit individuals/trusts to own and how do you disincentivize small empires? Wall Street investor monopoly ownership of dense housing in urban areas remains a major cause of rents outstripping income (see Blackrock's 2020-2025 market takeover and subsequent market manipulation of apartment rental rates in San Diego). Simple policy solution: trust-bust apartment ownership. Harder, more effective policy solution: municipality ownership of apartment blocks a la European cities. If regulators allow the same behaviors with water, you can expect a similar set of harms.
• ei8ths 9mo ago
  How about we stop companies from buying up properties to turn into airbnb/short term rentals, unless its a company that flips homes. Those we need.
  • fourside 9mo ago
    Why the exception for companies that flip homes? In my area, those typically have really poor workmanship and it’s a good idea to avoid them.
• misja111 9mo ago
  This mentioning of 'Wall Street' with investors if typical for the kind of populist argument that is used to argue that banning investors from buying houses is a good thing. What would this 'Wall Street' even mean? Would it mean that companies listed on the stock exchange are banned but privately owned companies not? Anyhow, I argue that investors are positive for the the house market. They shouldn't be banned. Investors provide enough liquidity to the market so that the building companies have enough certainty to invest in large housing projects, because they know that their properties will be sold quickly. If investors would be banned they would sell their houses eventually as well but it would take much longer. Similarly, investors improve mobility and throughput. An individual putting his house for sale will find a buyer much faster when investors are in the buying market, who are willing to buy up a house when nobody else takes it and sell it for a better price later. So: sellers sell faster, so they can move out and buy a new home faster as well: mobility in the house market increases. In IT terms: investors function as a buffer.
• ksec 9mo ago
  This is largely a good move. There are plenty of whales, once those 5% disappeared, price should slowly come down. ( The Hong Kong Housing market is the one worth studying ) Next would be increase supply, and may be if needed, additional tax for individuals owning more than one home or when they buy 2nd home. Largely making housing as an asset not attractive for certain group of investment. Housing continues to be the biggest problem in modern world and yet it is a problem not resolved.
  • john-h-k 9mo ago
    > There are plenty of whales, once those 5% disappeared, price should slowly come down But by how much? ~3-4% of housing has to be sold, some amount of it will still be bought for renting (as many people still want to rent). Surely this can’t have a very big effect on house price
    • bombcar 9mo ago
      It could be substantial just by increasing the number of occupied dwelling units - if institutional investors are willing to let housing sit empty for 6 months or a year (because it doesn't hit them where it hurts) and the average vacancy rate in a city is hovering around 10%, dropping that down to 5% will really shake up prices.
      • john-h-k 9mo ago
        If mega institutions are financial extractors who will take all money available, and the units can be rented to make more money, why aren’t they doing it? Why would the institution turn away free money but individuals owning the houses wouldn’t?
        • bombcar 9mo ago
          Because commercial real estate works on weird counter-intuitive things, and dropping rental rates adversely affects their entire portfolio more than leaving a building vacant does.
• bmitc 9mo ago
  Yea, right. "Wall Street" has publicized lashings and rules, but there's also a backdoor. And they obviously have a strangle-hold on rentals. The end game for capitalism is for everyone to rent everything: healthcare, cars, software, music, physical items, roads, etc.
• ratelimitsteve 9mo ago
  title of post is "US will ban", title of article is "Trump threatens to ban". OP why are you misleading people?
• fourside 9mo ago
  The title change here is editorializing. It’s not a given that this will be implemented and the original title reflects that: “Trump threatens to ban Wall Street investments in single-family homes”.
• avmich 9mo ago
  It seems like the root cause is to increase the supply by all means possible. Ban NIMBY instead, support more building, both with already existing infrastructure and with creation of the new one.
• h14h 9mo ago
  It is going to be fascinating to see how the impacts of this will ripple through the housing market. Two areas I'm particularly curious about are a) the financing of new construction, and b) the sale prices of SFHs.
• stevenalowe 9mo ago
  Um… banned by what authority? I fail to see how this is legal. Same as banning obese people from buying cookies
• mimd 9mo ago
  It's not going to solve the housing issue and is mostly for press (and it's not even getting into ulterior motives), but it might help with preventing a longer term issue of large investors becoming a major issue. Additionally, I wonder about the choice in properties as properties aren't fungible.
• cdrnsf 9mo ago
  Ban predatory private equity altogether.
• mywittyname 9mo ago
  Housing prices are rising due to inflation, and specifically inflation on the raw input for houses - lumber, building materials, and labor. Granted, this is not the only reason in all regions, places like California have much more complex, systematic reasons for increased housing prices. But the bulk of the US has housing prices that are somewhat in line with the cost of building, since there's no limit on land to throw cookie cutter subdivisions on. They don't want to admit that their abhorrent policies are hitting the pocket books of their supporters, so they latch onto popular sentiment instead of solving the problem. Typical of this administration. I built a house in 2018 for $350k. To build the same house again today would be $650k (and it would probably take twice as long). Surprisingly, the cost of land is not much more than it was 8 years ago. All of that cost increase is in materials and labor. The problem is, the market value of my house is $550k, at the most. Meaning it's not profitable to build new houses as the market can't sustain them. And who is going to sell their house at less than they can get another one for? Only people who are forced to move, which is probably why the there is such low inventory in the historically cheaper markets.
  • hwh03v3r 9mo ago
    Being in the lumber industry myself, I can tell you that lumber prices have not kept up with inflation. There was a major run up in price in 2021 and 2022, but prices have returned to pre-covid levels accounting for inflation. I have our own sales data, but this chart makes the case relatively well: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber.
• john01dav 9mo ago
  What counts as "Wall Street" here. Is it any investment property? After some threshold of owning many homes? If so, how many? 10? 10,000? Something else? Is it net worth? Maximum number of beneficial owners? You must title them in a natural person's name instead of a corporate entity? Your service address for your corporation is on wall street in NYC? Which option is being proposed vastly changes the merits and problems of this policy, so it's a poor choice that this isn't made abundantly clear.
• AbstractH24 9mo ago
  Even if this won’t work in practice it’s one of the things I’ve found myself agreeing more with than anything else done by the current White House/congress
• Anamon 9mo ago
  What a sign of the times, when Reuters calls a situation in which Democrats and Republicans can agree on something "perverse."