As housing costs rise, state policymakers move to rein in corporate landlords

While Americans contend with a widespread affordability crisis, the cost of housing and corporate landlords’ involvement in rising rents have come to the fore of public debate. In an effort to address housing affordability, policymakers across the country have advanced a wave of state-level legislation according to a new analysis by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP).  

In states across the country, legislators are taking action on the issue of corporate landlords. Interventions span a wide range of issues from banning the use of algorithms to artificially inflate rent to blocking corporations from buying housing entirely. While the bills vary massively in scope and effectiveness, a widespread legislative push towards protecting tenants from the worst impacts of financialization is beginning to crystalize.

The new Corporate Landlord Legislation Tracker provides a comprehensive look at the 76 bills introduced in 2026 that seek to regulate corporate landlords such as private equity, hedge funds, REITs, real estate investment firms, large publicly traded landlords, and landlords that make use of the limited liability corporation tax structure. Most of the featured bills focus specifically on these landlord types, though some bills included may be especially helpful for tenants of corporate landlords while also regulating landlords more broadly.

The bills featured in the tracker fall broadly into four types of policy approaches: anticonsolidation policies, which seek to reduce the concentration of property ownership in the hands of large landlords; transparency policies, which involve information gathering or disclosure requirements for landlords; antitrust policies, which ban landlords from sharing private rent price and vacancy data and outlaw noncompete agreements; and tenant protections which provide additional rights to renters.

“This wave of legislation underscores the momentum to hold Wall Street landlords accountable for putting profits ahead of people,” said Chris Noble, policy director at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. “There is growing recognition among lawmakers that we can’t let corporations continue to exploit our housing system at the expense of tenants and first-time homebuyers.”

In recent years, private equity firms and other Wall Street landlords have made significant investments in the housing market, buying up single-family, multi-family, and manufactured housing units across the country. Corporate landlords have been associated with extreme rent hikes, exorbitant junk fees, neglected maintenance of their properties, and aggressive evictions. Recent research from PESP shows that private equity firms now own 1 in 8 U.S. apartment units.