New Legislation Proposes to Take Wall Street Out of the Housing Market

In separate legislation, Representatives Jeff Jackson and Alma Adams of North Carolina, both Democrats, introduced the American Neighborhoods Protection Act on Wednesday. That bill would require corporate owners of more than 75 single-family homes to pay an annual fee of $10,000 per home into a housing trust fund to be used as down payment assistance for families.

With a divided Congress, the bills are unlikely to pass into law this session. But Mr. Smith said legislators needed to start a conversation.

The bills were introduced three months after The New York Times published a story examining the impact of corporate-backed investment on Charlotte, N.C., where, in 2022, investors purchased 17 percent of the city’s homes in cash, often outcompeting first-time buyers who rely heavily on mortgages.

In a pattern repeated in cities around the country, corporations focused on modestly priced houses, frequently in neighborhoods with large Black and Latino populations, and converted the properties to rentals. In one neighborhood in east Charlotte, Wall Street-backed investors bought half of the homes that sold in 2021 and 2022. On one block, all but one home that sold during that period sold in cash to an investor who rented it out.

Wall Street entered the single-family rental market in the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis, plucking up homes in foreclosure. Its influence has been growing ever since. By June 2022, institutional investors owned 3 percent of all single-family rentals nationwide, but in more affordable markets they owned a considerable market share; in Charlotte, they owned 20 percent, according to the Urban Institute. Even as the housing market slows, investors have remained active, buying 26 percent of the single-family homes that sold in June 2023, according to CoreLogic, a data analytics company.