Real Estate and Wall Street

Around the State of the Union, lawmakers rolled out competing proposals to curb institutional buying of single-family homes: a Trump-backed push for a permanent ban on corporate purchases and a Democratic American Homeownership Act, sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley and colleagues, that would strip depreciation and mortgage-interest deductions from corporations owning more than 50 single-family homes, bar them from federally backed mortgages and federal foreclosure purchases, and recycle tax savings into new-home construction and down-payment support. Urban Institute data show institutional owners hold about 3.8% of single-family rentals nationally — but more than 20% in some markets like Atlanta and Jacksonville — and housing experts warn neither proposal addresses the chronic underbuilding that has left the U.S. millions of homes short.