Major loopholes in investor homebuying ban enable private equity to skirt regulation

Today, the Senate voted to advance the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, legislation aimed at improving the affordability of housing across the country. The bill includes language codifying President Trump’s proposed ban on investor purchases of single-family homes. 

While the bill would enact a ban on large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes, the proposed legislation has significant loopholes that would enable corporate landlords to skirt the ban. These loopholes include: 

• The exemption of rent-to-own “homeownership programs,” whereby investors could purchase single-family homes to rent out and offer tenants the opportunity to purchase. As written, a private equity landlord could qualify for this exemption even if they never sell a home to an individual homebuyer.
• The exemption of build-to-rent programs that newly construct single-family homes to be managed as rental properties.
• The exemption of renovate-to-rent programs that would allow investors to buy a single-family home if they make limited capital improvements equal to at least 15% of the purchase price. As written, the bill does not include a deadline for these improvements to be completed.

The exemptions in the bill have few mechanisms to hold private equity landlords accountable to selling homes to individuals, creating opportunities for landlords to game the system and hold on to these homes indefinitely. The homeownership program exemption, for example, does not have any measures to evaluate the success of such programs in enabling renters to access homeownership. Some large single-family rental companies have previously had homeownership programs that did not result in a significant number of homes being sold to renters. Home Partners of America, which private equity firm Blackstone merged with Tricon in 2025, previously had a rent-to-own program. A 2023 analysis found that fewer than a third of the homes analyzed were successfully sold to original tenants and in some markets, evictions were more common than sales. If this provision aims to increase homeownership, then large institutional investors should be judged on whether they actually sell homes to people.

Below is the statement of Jim Baker, executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project: 

“Unfortunately, the investor ban provision in the ROAD to Housing Act is cover for the corporate single-family rental industry to keep operating the way it always has. This ban might as well have been written by Wall Street. 

“As it is currently written, the ROAD to Housing Act gives President Trump his investor ban on single-family home purchases while providing major loopholes for private equity and other Wall Street landlords to sneak through. As the president touts taking action on housing affordability, his private equity donors can continue to buy up American homes and operate their rentals as usual. 

“The loopholes in this provision are massive. Exemptions to the ban include build-to-rent homes, homes purchased for renovation, and homes purchased for poorly-defined ‘homeownership programs.’ Astoundingly, there are few mechanisms of accountability to ensure that corporate purchasers are treating tenants fairly and selling homes to individuals.

“For legislators who want to truly protect their constituents, we urge you: require that private equity landlords sell homes to individual homebuyers and don’t mistreat tenants. To meaningfully rein in Wall Street in the single-family market, Americans need legislation that holds institutional landlords accountable instead of providing them with carte-blanche to keep buying our homes.”