Blackstone Shares Plummet After Trump Weighs Ban On Big Investors Buying Single-Family Homes

Shares of Blackstone Inc. fell sharply on Wednesday after Donald Trump said he plans to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, a move he described as aimed at improving housing affordability.

In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump said he is “immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes” and will urge Congress to codify the proposal into law.

The announcement triggered declines across housing-related stocks in U.S. markets, with Blackstone’s share price down about 5.6% during the trading session.

Blackstone is one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers, with more than $1 trillion in AUM (assets under management).

The firm has become a significant investor in U.S. residential real estate in recent years, including single-family rental homes and apartments.

Other companies involved in the single-family rental market also saw their shares fall after Trump’s announcement.

Shares of American Homes 4 Rent fell about 11%, while Invitation Homes Inc. slid roughly 10% and Builders FirstSource Inc., which supplies materials to homebuilders, dropped by more than 5%.

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” he wrote on 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.

“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.”

Then, in 2024, it completed the $3.5 billion purchase of Tricon Residential, a Toronto-based company with around 38,000 U.S. rental houses.

Critics argue that Blackstone’s large-scale home purchases have added pressure to an already tight housing market, saying the firm’s buying activity has reduced the number of homes available to individual buyers and contributed to rising prices.

Blackstone has said it owns less than 1% of available housing in the markets where it operates, and it typically renovates properties before offering them for rent.

Experts have said it is unlikely that Trump’s proposal, if it passes, will result in more houses becoming available or lower costs.

Scott Lincicome, vice president at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, told MarketWatch that large institutional investors were minor players.

He said that Trump’s plan was “Populist Policy 101,” adding, “Pick a villain and blame it for a real problem even though it is a minor, if not totally insignificant, player in causing it.”

“Institutional investors are a tiny share of the market, and a tinier share of the total U.S. housing market. There is not good enough evidence that institutional investors drive up home prices,” he said.

Jake Krimmel, a senior economist at real estate platform Realtor.com, also told the outlet that institutional investors “are a red herring for the affordability issues or the housing shortages issues that we’ve seen.”

“It plays really well politically, of course, but the unfortunate reality is that even if we remove these guys from real estate, it would not have a large enough impact to really move the needle on affordability,” he added.

The White House did not provide detailed policy text on how the proposed ban would be implemented or what legal authority would be used.

Trump said he would discuss the topic, including further housing and affordability proposals, during his speech in Davos in two weeks time.