It’s not at all clear that homes built specifically for the rental market disenfranchises homebuyers. An argument could be made that increasing the stock of single family homes for rent adds to overall supply and decreases prices. It’s the private equity firms buying existing housing stock that is potentially competing against first time home buyers.
As those articles make clear, the talking points the Senator uses in this "article" (let's be charitable and call it that) lump anyone who purchases a home using an LLC or S-Corp into the "corporate investor" category. That would include me, since I owned a rental property through an S-Corp for about a decade. The Senator's major claim here -- big corporations are screwing the little guy by gobbling up entire subdivisions -- is bunk. It's so obviously bunk it strains credulity to claim the Senator doesn't realize it.
Bernie Moreno may be a very nice, well meaning, and intelligent man, but in his role as Senator Moreno, his job is not to be honest or intelligent but to push his party's agenda regardless of how stupid it might be.
I don't subscribe to Commonplace to hear ill-informed Senators spout talking points as if they actually know something about this (or any other) field.
I can’t tell what is more impressive. The people peddling this baloney or the people buying it.
This bill has enough exemptions to make the “ban” on institutional investors largely symbolic. Build-to-rent, renovate-to-rent, and rent-to-own programs are all carved out – and the rent-to-own exemption requires no proof that investors ever actually sell homes to renters. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project, no friend of Wall Street, called the bill plainly: “it might as well have been written by Wall Street.”
ALL Prices are set by the Supply and Demand. The Supply is always a constant. New homes/apartments constantly being built versus the population needing houses. Its the DEMAND that has increased. Our system has kept up with the population increasing at the rate it does - but something happened in 2020-2024. In order to flood the census and get more congressional seats, the Democrats IMPORTED somewhere around 20m illegal immigrants that INSTANTLY added to the demand that was growing at the constant rate. Coupled with the inflation that was created in 2021 & 2022, the interest rates went up and people like me wanted to downsize, but didn't want to abandon the 3% interest rate I am paying.
In essence, it is an issue that was 100% created by the Democratic party from 2020-2024.
If the Biden Democrats had come up with this idea to restrict Wall Street from buying up residential housing, the media would have been trumpeting it from the heavens. However, since the Democrats get a lot of political donations from Wall Street firms, they cannot go there.
Um, Frank, Elizabeth Warren and her fellow libs have been touting this for years. Since at least 2022. Maybe this is the horseshoe theory at work. Again. Left fringe meets right fringe...
Those Wall Street "capitalists" should invest in productive enterprise and not lazy ass passive asset Inflating market manipulation. Matthew Yglesias is way overrated in his economic opinion.
Ok, I don't think we are debating the same thing. We are talking about Blackrock and others buying up EXISTING single-family residential housing for rental income and real property asset appreciation investments. That competition for limited supply in many markets and drives up overall housing costs.
Blackrock investing in a company doing new residential housing construction is a completely different thing and should be supported as long as it is housing that will go on the market. Multi-unit housing of course is also a different animal if designated rental units.
Frank I see you’re concerned about Wall Street money in politics. I’m sure that extends to the money WS contributes to both parties? Switching gears, I’m wondering about your view on the tech oligarchs, crypto crooks, finance titans, and other billionaires who contributed so heavily to Don? Specifically, what are your thoughts on Elon. He is a major government contractor, he controls tech that is central to our foreign policy interests, and through his doge scam he was given access to proprietary info about his regulators and competitors. Was that bad?
Of course the crypto crooks are a story unto themselves, but suffice it to say Don has been rewarded quite handsomely for his support-a few billion in his pocket and counting. His most lucrative career endeavor to date, outpacing his former gravy trains-inheritance and being a game show host…
Since these creeps ended up in the front row at Don’s inaugural, they must have been buying something? What’s your theory?
A positive step, Senator, to be sure. The challenge will be in closing the loopholes and overcoming regional monopolist aspirations that control local zoning and market positions.
The devil, as they say, is in the details. The constraint at the federal level, lies in trying to craft legislation that can adjust to local conditions.
At the heart of this issue, is unfettered capital migration and the marginal costs of compliance that favors scale of ownership. It's a wicked problem that leaves you playing "whack a mole" as new ways of gaming the system are deployed.
I could write you a detailed report on just one carveout in the bill; manufactured housing. The business model is one of controlling the land and renting it out, while using the accrued capital of the tenants, who own the structure. The "devil" here is primarily what happens as corporate actors bid-up land purchase prices, and then amortize their inflated expenditure by raising rents.
Well... one thing at a time; the legislation sets a precedent, and the carveouts will require attention as the details emerge.
I support the President's idea too. From what I understand, the owner-occupied-to-rent corporate scheme mentioned is with existing homes on the market. I live in Cincinnati. What I observe is more multi-family buildings being built than single family dwellings--apartments and condos. The problem here is that they are advertised as "luxury"--with amenities. Some $2,000 a month or more. I don't have a problem that they exist, but they are subsidized with tax breaks. Use the tax breaks for "affordable" housing, so low-income, college grads and middle-class people can afford to "move up" and buy a house from a homeowner and not a faceless corporation.
A case can be made that renting provides mobility that ownership forfeits. In economic downturns when some are laid off, having to sell a house or, worse, pay a mortgage while paying to live somewhere else until that house sells, is devastating.
Additionally, many of the proposed solutions like down payment assistance and the like just raise prices by increasing demand. The margin of profit for builders remains higher for larger homes so that's what will be built.
Subdivisions like those in Levittown. PA made home purchases realistic in the 1950s but those were small footprint, no frills housing. Two bedrooms and one bath just won't sell in today's HGTV-driven marketplace.
So, like a lot of these sorts of problems, we consumers are the cause, not business.
Aren’t Ohio teachers among the lowest paid in the nation? What’s the state’s minimum wage? Maybe you should start there. If full time work can’t afford a home and raising a family, it’s possible that the income is the problem. Too many things are unaffordable for the problem to be the cost of any one thing.
We need to build more housing full stop. More single families and more rental properties.
Where is the evidence to suggest that preventing corporations from building more rental properties will lower prices for new home owners rather than just raising rents?
I wondered that too. Senator Moreno's claim is that big corporations are building entire subdivisions for rental. He presents scant evidence of that. but even if he's correct, they're still BUILDING entire subdivisions, which is exactly what we need to bring down home prices long term.
The Affluence crowd is Democrats who care about housing but their interest is in urban rentals whereas MAGA housing policy is about owner occupied single family dwellings. It would be nice to put partisanship aside and do both but Democrats seem to be turning to Vance hate since he is a major advocate of this policy.
Pretty sure it was in The Argument though I can't find it now. They essentially made the same argument you did above. But there was a definite dig at Vance. I don't know why we can't have both.
Aftab's zoning reforms should allow for a housing boom over time, and if these are restricted to homeowners, and not investment firms (as per this bill), I expect supply to rise. Prices should fall, and families will be homeowners once more! I may be naive, but I see a bright future ahead, especially if both parties continue addressing this most pressing of issues
The large investment firms are outbidding homeowners and raising prices on already existing homes. By constructing their BTR houses, this is reducing price pressure, but also allows them to dominate and monopolise the housing market by location. I'm on the fence, but the development of an oligopical housing market does alarm me. Are those concerns legitimate, do you think?
"Large institutional investors" own about 1% of single-family homes nationally. This is too small a percentage to have significant price effects.
More importantly, Senator Moreno's key claim isn't that institutional investors are "outbidding homeowners on existing homes" but that they "developments are rising as build-to-rent subdivisions". Even if he's correct (and there's no real data to suggest he is) building new homes is the solution to price appreciation not the cause.
I don't think they are Howard. The percentage of corporate owned homes, even in the rent to own market, is way, way too small to have a oligopoly power.
Look, I don't have any issues with banning corporations from buying up existing single family housing. I don't think it will make much of any difference, but I don't think it will cause much harm either.
But preventing corporations from building rental housing is a very bad idea because it could cause less housing to be built. Matt Yglesias' piece today is definitely worth a read:
It’s not at all clear that homes built specifically for the rental market disenfranchises homebuyers. An argument could be made that increasing the stock of single family homes for rent adds to overall supply and decreases prices. It’s the private equity firms buying existing housing stock that is potentially competing against first time home buyers.
And if Congress wants to do something productive in its spare time, how about passing voter ID instead of having doggie costume parades: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/one-week-into-dhs-shutdown-dogs-in-costume-parade-through-the-senate/ar-AA1X7mWW
I actually support the bill and the corporate ownership ban, but this post is drivel.
There are about 90M single-family homes in America, and about 500-800K of them are owned by "large institutional investors".
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2026/feb/25/josh-riley/investor-owned-single-family-homes-us
https://www.credaily.com/briefs/single-family-rental-ownership-remains-individual-led
As those articles make clear, the talking points the Senator uses in this "article" (let's be charitable and call it that) lump anyone who purchases a home using an LLC or S-Corp into the "corporate investor" category. That would include me, since I owned a rental property through an S-Corp for about a decade. The Senator's major claim here -- big corporations are screwing the little guy by gobbling up entire subdivisions -- is bunk. It's so obviously bunk it strains credulity to claim the Senator doesn't realize it.
Bernie Moreno may be a very nice, well meaning, and intelligent man, but in his role as Senator Moreno, his job is not to be honest or intelligent but to push his party's agenda regardless of how stupid it might be.
I don't subscribe to Commonplace to hear ill-informed Senators spout talking points as if they actually know something about this (or any other) field.
I can’t tell what is more impressive. The people peddling this baloney or the people buying it.
This bill has enough exemptions to make the “ban” on institutional investors largely symbolic. Build-to-rent, renovate-to-rent, and rent-to-own programs are all carved out – and the rent-to-own exemption requires no proof that investors ever actually sell homes to renters. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project, no friend of Wall Street, called the bill plainly: “it might as well have been written by Wall Street.”
ALL Prices are set by the Supply and Demand. The Supply is always a constant. New homes/apartments constantly being built versus the population needing houses. Its the DEMAND that has increased. Our system has kept up with the population increasing at the rate it does - but something happened in 2020-2024. In order to flood the census and get more congressional seats, the Democrats IMPORTED somewhere around 20m illegal immigrants that INSTANTLY added to the demand that was growing at the constant rate. Coupled with the inflation that was created in 2021 & 2022, the interest rates went up and people like me wanted to downsize, but didn't want to abandon the 3% interest rate I am paying.
In essence, it is an issue that was 100% created by the Democratic party from 2020-2024.
If the Biden Democrats had come up with this idea to restrict Wall Street from buying up residential housing, the media would have been trumpeting it from the heavens. However, since the Democrats get a lot of political donations from Wall Street firms, they cannot go there.
Um, Frank, Elizabeth Warren and her fellow libs have been touting this for years. Since at least 2022. Maybe this is the horseshoe theory at work. Again. Left fringe meets right fringe...
No. This was policy that was originally proposed by folks like Ro Khanna, Adam Smth, and Jeff Mekley.
And it was bad policy when they proposed it, and it remains bad policy:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/maybe-all-rental-housing-should-be
Hi rent-seeker!
Those Wall Street "capitalists" should invest in productive enterprise and not lazy ass passive asset Inflating market manipulation. Matthew Yglesias is way overrated in his economic opinion.
BUILD to rent housing is not passive market manipulation. It's building housing!!
Ok, I don't think we are debating the same thing. We are talking about Blackrock and others buying up EXISTING single-family residential housing for rental income and real property asset appreciation investments. That competition for limited supply in many markets and drives up overall housing costs.
Blackrock investing in a company doing new residential housing construction is a completely different thing and should be supported as long as it is housing that will go on the market. Multi-unit housing of course is also a different animal if designated rental units.
Frank I see you’re concerned about Wall Street money in politics. I’m sure that extends to the money WS contributes to both parties? Switching gears, I’m wondering about your view on the tech oligarchs, crypto crooks, finance titans, and other billionaires who contributed so heavily to Don? Specifically, what are your thoughts on Elon. He is a major government contractor, he controls tech that is central to our foreign policy interests, and through his doge scam he was given access to proprietary info about his regulators and competitors. Was that bad?
Of course the crypto crooks are a story unto themselves, but suffice it to say Don has been rewarded quite handsomely for his support-a few billion in his pocket and counting. His most lucrative career endeavor to date, outpacing his former gravy trains-inheritance and being a game show host…
Since these creeps ended up in the front row at Don’s inaugural, they must have been buying something? What’s your theory?
A positive step, Senator, to be sure. The challenge will be in closing the loopholes and overcoming regional monopolist aspirations that control local zoning and market positions.
The devil, as they say, is in the details. The constraint at the federal level, lies in trying to craft legislation that can adjust to local conditions.
At the heart of this issue, is unfettered capital migration and the marginal costs of compliance that favors scale of ownership. It's a wicked problem that leaves you playing "whack a mole" as new ways of gaming the system are deployed.
I could write you a detailed report on just one carveout in the bill; manufactured housing. The business model is one of controlling the land and renting it out, while using the accrued capital of the tenants, who own the structure. The "devil" here is primarily what happens as corporate actors bid-up land purchase prices, and then amortize their inflated expenditure by raising rents.
Well... one thing at a time; the legislation sets a precedent, and the carveouts will require attention as the details emerge.
I support the President's idea too. From what I understand, the owner-occupied-to-rent corporate scheme mentioned is with existing homes on the market. I live in Cincinnati. What I observe is more multi-family buildings being built than single family dwellings--apartments and condos. The problem here is that they are advertised as "luxury"--with amenities. Some $2,000 a month or more. I don't have a problem that they exist, but they are subsidized with tax breaks. Use the tax breaks for "affordable" housing, so low-income, college grads and middle-class people can afford to "move up" and buy a house from a homeowner and not a faceless corporation.
A case can be made that renting provides mobility that ownership forfeits. In economic downturns when some are laid off, having to sell a house or, worse, pay a mortgage while paying to live somewhere else until that house sells, is devastating.
Additionally, many of the proposed solutions like down payment assistance and the like just raise prices by increasing demand. The margin of profit for builders remains higher for larger homes so that's what will be built.
Subdivisions like those in Levittown. PA made home purchases realistic in the 1950s but those were small footprint, no frills housing. Two bedrooms and one bath just won't sell in today's HGTV-driven marketplace.
So, like a lot of these sorts of problems, we consumers are the cause, not business.
Aren’t Ohio teachers among the lowest paid in the nation? What’s the state’s minimum wage? Maybe you should start there. If full time work can’t afford a home and raising a family, it’s possible that the income is the problem. Too many things are unaffordable for the problem to be the cost of any one thing.
We need to build more housing full stop. More single families and more rental properties.
Where is the evidence to suggest that preventing corporations from building more rental properties will lower prices for new home owners rather than just raising rents?
I wondered that too. Senator Moreno's claim is that big corporations are building entire subdivisions for rental. He presents scant evidence of that. but even if he's correct, they're still BUILDING entire subdivisions, which is exactly what we need to bring down home prices long term.
Bernie Moreno is a scumbag car dealer who fights to protect dealerships over consumers. Nothing he says is worth listening to.
The Affluence crowd is Democrats who care about housing but their interest is in urban rentals whereas MAGA housing policy is about owner occupied single family dwellings. It would be nice to put partisanship aside and do both but Democrats seem to be turning to Vance hate since he is a major advocate of this policy.
The Affluence crowd wants more housing full stop. Both more single family homes AND more rentals.
I don't get that from their proclamations. I have seen a lot of criticism of Vance for his attack on private equity buying homes.
Can you point to the criticisms you have in mind.
I'm pretty all in on the abundance folks, and what I'm seeing is:
- The belief that the percentage of corporate owned single family homes is so low that laws against it won't do much one way or another.
- The belief that in the "build to rent" market the corporate percentage is higher and that rules against it will cause less housing to be built.
- Also, the criticism has been less directed at Vance than critics of abundance on the left like Warren.
Pretty sure it was in The Argument though I can't find it now. They essentially made the same argument you did above. But there was a definite dig at Vance. I don't know why we can't have both.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "both"? We may be on the same page here, but I'm not sure what you mean.
Rental units and owner occupied single family residences.
Corporations taxing us is big business
Why Howard. Why do you think this act will help people in Cincinnati?
Aftab's zoning reforms should allow for a housing boom over time, and if these are restricted to homeowners, and not investment firms (as per this bill), I expect supply to rise. Prices should fall, and families will be homeowners once more! I may be naive, but I see a bright future ahead, especially if both parties continue addressing this most pressing of issues
Agreed that the zoning provisions in the bill are good but why do you think the provisions preventing corporations from building for rent are good?
The large investment firms are outbidding homeowners and raising prices on already existing homes. By constructing their BTR houses, this is reducing price pressure, but also allows them to dominate and monopolise the housing market by location. I'm on the fence, but the development of an oligopical housing market does alarm me. Are those concerns legitimate, do you think?
"Large institutional investors" own about 1% of single-family homes nationally. This is too small a percentage to have significant price effects.
More importantly, Senator Moreno's key claim isn't that institutional investors are "outbidding homeowners on existing homes" but that they "developments are rising as build-to-rent subdivisions". Even if he's correct (and there's no real data to suggest he is) building new homes is the solution to price appreciation not the cause.
I don't think they are Howard. The percentage of corporate owned homes, even in the rent to own market, is way, way too small to have a oligopoly power.
Look, I don't have any issues with banning corporations from buying up existing single family housing. I don't think it will make much of any difference, but I don't think it will cause much harm either.
But preventing corporations from building rental housing is a very bad idea because it could cause less housing to be built. Matt Yglesias' piece today is definitely worth a read:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/maybe-all-rental-housing-should-be
Except it won't bring down prices, at all.