The United States federal government should ban corporate acquisition of single-family residences.

Takeout - Small national share doesn't prevent local monopolies and rising rents.

Vojta, 2024. [COMMENT: Solving the Housing Puzzle, 91 U. Chi. L. Rev. 2407, Export Citation, December, 2024 Reporter 91 U. Chi. L. Rev. 2407 *, Length: 18601 words, Author: George J. Vojta+Link to the text of the note https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/solving-housing-puzzle

Despite these defenses, market power appears to play a role in rising single-family rents. There is a budding literature documenting the impacts of market concentration on these highly localized housing markets,24Link to the text of the note including a causal link between high market concentration and rising rents.25Link to the text of the note Thus, this Comment explores why the single-family housing market may require a different approach to assessing monopolistic power than traditional antitrust doctrine. Specifically, housing's unique market structure exposes the single-family rental market to monopolistic power at lower market shares. Markets are far narrower than defenders [*2413] of institutional investors imply: while the market analysis is often done at the national or metro area level, research on migration trends in the United States suggest that the relevant geographic markets are much smaller.26Link to the text of the note Additionally, the structure of the housing market also obfuscates institutions' monopoly power altogether by allowing them to exercise control over traditional notions of supply and demand. The single-family housing market differs from typical markets because institutions interact with consumers across two dimensions. In the first stage, institutions compete with individuals in the home-buying market. Afterward, in the second stage, institutions turn around and immediately rent these homes to consumers. Evaluating the housing puzzle through the lens of antitrust is additionally important because current trends suggest that antitrust violations may be cognizable in the not-so-distant future. Consider again the fact that Invitation Homes' market share of the Atlanta metro area single-family rental market has gone from less than 1% in 2021 to about 10% today.27Link to the text of the note This order-of-magnitude jump is only the beginning. Industry experts now believe that by 2030, institutional ownership of single-family homes may jump to 40%, multiplying their existing market share by a factor of eight.28Link to the text of the note Additionally, the recent judgment against the National Association of Realtors for violating § 1 of the Sherman Act29Link to the text of the note by agreeing to fix prices by setting member agents' commissions between 5% and 6%30Link to the text of the note indicates an appetite for housing-based antitrust cases by plaintiffs and a willingness to entertain these cases by judges and juries.

Corporations outbid individuals, increasing prices and reducing supply.

HUD 23 [US HUD, "Institutional Investors Outbid Individual Homebuyers", 12/1/2023, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, https://www.huduser.gov/archives/portal/periodicals/em/winter23/highlight1.html, Accessed 03/15/2026] //Yadavi

Winter 2023 IN THIS ISSUE: Institutional Investors Outbid Individual Homebuyers Institutional Investors: A Local Perspective Investments in Affordable Housing Institutional Investors Outbid Individual Homebuyers Highlights Institutional and other large corporate investors own an increasing share of single-family homes, taking properties off the market for individual homebuyers and putting upward pressure on home prices and rents. Institutional investors have concentrated their purchases regionally (in the Sun Belt) and in particular neighborhoods (typically low-income, historically nonwhite and disinvested areas). Federal, state, and local governments can combat the negative impacts of institutional investors, often in partnership with nonprofit and other social-purpose organizations that can purchase single-family homes for individual buyers or help those buyers purchase them directly.

Corporate acquisition creates monopolistic power, driving up single-family rents.

Vojta, 2024. [COMMENT: Solving the Housing Puzzle, 91 U. Chi. L. Rev. 2407, Export Citation, December, 2024 Reporter 91 U. Chi. L. Rev. 2407 *, Length: 18601 words, Author: George J. Vojta+Link to the text of the note https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/solving-housing-puzzle

Despite these defenses, market power appears to play a role in rising single-family rents. There is a budding literature documenting the impacts of market concentration on these highly localized housing markets,24Link to the text of the note including a causal link between high market concentration and rising rents.25Link to the text of the note Thus, this Comment explores why the single-family housing market may require a different approach to assessing monopolistic power than traditional antitrust doctrine. Specifically, housing's unique market structure exposes the single-family rental market to monopolistic power at lower market shares.

Banning corporate buying shrinks future rental supply and raises rents.

Glaeser 2-23 [Joe Gyourko Edward Glaeser; Joe Gyourko is the Martin Bucksbaum Professor of Real Estate, Finance and Business & Public Policy at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.; 2-23-2026; "The ripple effects of banning institutional purchases of single-family rentals"; Brookings; https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-ripple-effects-of-banning-institutional-purchases-of-single-family-rentals/; DOA: 3-11-2026] cheoleng

Spillover effects between owner-occupied and rental housing markets Owner-occupied and rental markets must be considered in tandem when analyzing changes to the single-family rental market, as any shift in supply in the owner-occupied market will have attendant impacts on the rental market and vice versa. Since institutional investors are suppliers of rental housing, limiting their ability to purchase homes will decrease the future supply of rental units as it expands the supply of owner-occupied homes. Both Barbieri & Dobbels (2026) and Coven (2025) found that while big institutional investors did lead to higher home prices in their most concentrated geographies, institutional investment also led to lower rents.2 Importantly, both price effects were modest economically, at least partially due to accompanying supply changes.

Large investors own a tiny share of single-family rentals nationwide.

Srikant 25 [Keshav Srikant, "Do private equity firms own 20% of single family homes?", 10/06/2025, ctmirror, https://ctmirror.org/2025/10/06/private-equity-firms-own-single-family-homes, Accessed 03/16/2026] //Yadavi

Large institutional investors, defined as those owning over 100 homes (which includes private equity firms), own 3 percent of the single-family rental stock nationwide according to Brookings. This share is higher in some local markets — in the 20 Metropolitan Statistical Areas where these investors are most present, they own 12.4 percent — but they still own far less than 20 percent nationwide. The Urban Institute similarly finds they own just 3.8 percent of nationwide single-family rental stock. Considering purchases rather than holdings, investors (those buying non-primary residences) bought nearly 27 percent of all homes sold in the first quarter of 2025. However, most of these purchases are likely by small investors (those who own less than 5 properties), as they own 85 percent of all investor-owned residential properties. Research by John Burns Research and Consulting found institutional investors are buying less than 2 percent of all homes.

Corporate acquisition is too small to impact housing affordability.

Macan-Markar ’26 [Shaista Macan-Markar, ; 1-20-2026; "Insights Into Institutional Ownership of Single Family Housing"; Global; https://www.ubs.com/us/en/wealth-management/insights/market-news/article.3017504.html; accessed 2-26-2026] baybay

Market Share: When looking across the US, institutional holdings of single-family homes remain at about 0.35% of the housing stock and institutional investors only account for about 3.0% of single-family rentals (SFR), according to BofA. Large institutional players such as Blackstone only hold about 0.06% of single-family homes, and the majority of SFRs are actually held by local mom-and-pop landlords. It is our takeaway that preventing or limiting institutional buyers from the single family market is unlikely to move the needle on the rental market. And while there is higher institutional ownership for SFR's in cities such as Charlotte, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Nashville, the percent of institutional ownership is still quite negligible at only 3-5% of the local housing market, according to BofA.