Amid housing shortage, Trump seeks ban on corporations buying homes

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — President Donald Trump said Jan. 7 he will seek to ban corporations from buying single-family homes amid the housing shortage, an issue the U.S. bishops’ conference has said is affecting “a basic human right” nationwide.

“​​For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” Trump wrote in a Jan. 7 post on his social media website, Truth Social. 

“It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans,” Trump argued. “It is for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations.”

Trump added he would “discuss this topic, including further Housing and Affordability proposals, and more” at his upcoming speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later in January. 

But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., responded in a post on X that “Senate Democrats tried to do this last year. Republicans blocked it.”

Housing shortage threatens ‘basic human right’

In an October 2025 letter to members of Congress in support of the ROAD to Housing Act of 2025, Ukrainian Catholic Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of Philadelphia, wrote for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops‘ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development that the Catholic Church “recognizes housing as a basic human right that must be available to all families and individuals.” 

“Right now, far too many of our neighbors are struggling to access this right,” that letter said, urging lawmakers to consider steps to increase the supply of affordable and quality housing and reduce housing instability and poverty.

Housing policy analysts who spoke with OSV News stressed that while Trump has not yet released the details of his proposal, corporate investors buying single-family homes represent a relatively small share of U.S. housing supply. 

A May 2024 report by the Government Accountability Office found as of June 2022, one estimate showed institutional investors owned approximately 450,000 homes, or about 3% of all single-family rental homes nationally, with a higher concentration of those homes in Sunbelt states. The top five institutional investors together owned more than 300,000 homes.

The report said the studies it reviewed ” found institutional investors may have contributed to an increase in home prices and rents after the financial crisis.” However, it said their effects on homeownership and tenants, such as eviction rates, are less clear due to limited data and “no agreed-upon definition of institutional investor.”

More needed to solve home affordability crisis

Lelaine Bigelow, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Poverty and Inequality, told OSV News that limiting corporate ownership “does seem to be a very good policy, and it could help some buyers, but on its own, probably isn’t enough to solve the affordability crisis.”

“I’m glad that we all can agree that there is an affordability crisis, particularly when it comes to housing,” she said, adding that the issues of affordability and inflation should be considered as distinct.

“Even if we have seen inflation cool, price levels are still high relative to incomes,” she said. 

Margaret Pfeil, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame and a member of the university’s Institute for Social Concerns, told OSV News that “the principle of subsidiarity” should inform housing policy discussions, because housing “is a pretty localized issue.”

“It might be a national crisis, but then when you drill down, every local community has certain zoning ordinances and city plans and different financial mechanisms that can encourage or discourage home ownership,” she said.

Edward Pinto, a senior fellow and codirector of the AEI Housing Center at the American Enterprise Institute, told OSV News that he believed the president’s proposed ban “would not appreciably move the needle here in terms of freeing up housing stock and reducing prices.”

“I understand the president’s frustration with the state of the single-family housing market,” he said. 

“You can’t rely on things that are just going to increase demand,” Pinto argued. “If you increase demand and don’t increase supply, you’re going to get higher prices.”

Strategies to boost housing supply

Avenues of more fully utilizing existing housing supply, Pinto suggested, include granting an income tax holiday on rental income for vacant rooms in single-family homes, as well as increasing exceptions to capital gains taxes for owner-occupied single-family homes owned for more than two years by seniors.

He added that the federal government could incentivize states to ease their zoning restrictions by giving cash grants for increasing the number of small lots that can be used for new homes, and building a greater number of townhouses and single-family homes with smaller square footage. 

“Maybe they’re 1,500 square feet instead of 2,300 square feet, but they cost less to sell, to build and sell,” he said. 

Pfeil argued the president’s sweeping tariff policy has played a role, by creating uncertainty for builders about the price of materials. A tariff is a tax imposed by a government on imported goods. 

Trump has argued his tariffs, a key part of his economic agenda, would protect American manufacturing. But some economists have cautioned they will raise consumer prices on many consumer goods.

“Nobody knows what will happen with the effect of tariffs on construction materials, for example,” Pfeil said. 

Bigelow added that she hopes the Trump administration will prioritize the needs of “low and moderate income people’s need for housing.” She said that public housing is underfunded and “we haven’t built any new public housing in a long time.” 

Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.

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