You have to give it to Wall Street: It really knows how to work the media.
Just look at the response to President Donald Trump’s proposal this month to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes. He called for this reform on Jan. 8, followed by an executive order on Jan. 20. From the start, there has been a slew of news stories and op-eds saying the president is getting it all wrong — that banning Wall Street from scooping up homes will solve nothing.
But Trump is absolutely right. This reform will not solve everything with the homeownership affordability crisis, but it will make a meaningful difference. My story is proof.
As I write this, I’m sitting in a condo in Marco Island, Florida. I bought it in 2021. But before that, I spent considerable time trying to buy a single-family home with no luck. In the first few months of 2021, I put down offers on four or five places. My offers were competitive, even in the wild times of the pandemic. But every time, I lost. Turns out, I was competing with Wall Street tycoons.
Institutional investors, mostly from out of state, have been snapping up homes on Marco Island ever since it was devastated by a hurricane in 2017. The data show that my county has since experienced some of the highest activity from institutional investors in America. They buy the homes and then rent them. About 1 in 4 homes on Marco Island are rentals.
But that leaves fewer homes for people like me. Obviously, I can’t compete with a Wall Street firm. They usually make all-cash offers, while I was offering 20% down, like a normal person. For the seller, there’s no contest. Wall Street wins every time.
Did institutional investors beat me out on every place I tried to buy? I can’t be certain. But either way, their very presence in Marco Island hurts me. Because they have bought so many homes, there are more people competing for fewer houses. Even if I lost to another family, both of us were forced to operate in a more cut-throat market than normal. And because there are fewer houses on the market overall, those that remain sell for higher prices. Wall Street has contributed to a perfect storm for people like me.
It was not always like this. In 2011, no investor owned more than 1,000 single-family homes. Now, the five largest investors alone own more than 300,000 homes. In Atlanta, about 25% of homes are owned by big companies. In Jacksonville, it’s 21%. As of 2022, there were 12 big cities where investors owned more than 10% of all homes. That number has surely grown since then: In the second quarter of 2025, investors bought one out of every three new homes in America. That’s thousands of new homes that regular people never got the chance to buy. The homes they did try to buy cost even more.
In Marco Island, things have only gotten worse since I gave up on finding a home. I know a lot of people, including landscapers, waiters, fishing guides, you name it, who are struggling to find even a condo like the one I bought. They need the relief that Trump is fighting to provide.
The president’s new executive order will basically ban every federal agency, along with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae, from supporting institutional investor home purchases in any way. While the details are still being hammered out, the result will be more homes available for families to purchase. They will also be more affordable because there will be more homes on the market. More choices and lower prices are a win-win for families and young people like me.
THE WHITE HOUSE’S FALSE START ON HOUSING
I hope the president sees this reform through to completion. That means ignoring the media, as it carries Wall Street’s water on this matter. The basic gist of their argument is that institutional investors don’t own that many homes, all things considered. Besides, they say, there are other ways to make homes affordable anyway.
But I am proof that Wall Street owns too many homes as it is. If there are other ways to make homes easier to buy, the president should do those things, too. But he’s equally right to make it easier for families, not Wall Street, to buy homes. That message is music to the ears of millions of people just like me.
Hayden Dublois is a data and analytics director at the Foundation for Government Accountability.