Washington, D.C. — Today, the American Economic Liberties Project released a new paper, “Phoenix Case Study: Single-Family Rentals, Built-to-Rent, and Undoing the Corporate Capture of Housing,” which examines how Wall Street investors have transformed Phoenix into one of America’s top markets for corporate-owned single-family rentals, second only to Atlanta. The paper by Laurel Kilgour and Allie Gross traces how decades of policies weakened local homebuilders and opened the door to investor capture, leaving Phoenix residents with a more elusive promise of homeownership, more expensive rent, and more aggressive evictions.

“Phoenix was one of Wall Street’s first testing grounds for turning starter homes into financial commodities,” said Laurel Kilgour, Research Manager at American Economic Liberties Project. “Corporate landlord Invitation Homes bundled Phoenix homes into the industry’s first-ever single-family rental securitization product, and then Zillow’s failed house flipping experiment forked even more homes over to corporate landlords. Now Phoenix is the epicenter of the next phase — build-to-rent — with more neighborhoods set aside for corporate rentals than anywhere else in the country. The result is a housing market where Wall Street builds real estate wealth, while working families are turned into permanent tenants, paying more for less.”

“We need to make homeownership a lot easier for families and a lot harder for corporations,” Kilgour continued. “Arizona should pass the Own Something and Be Happy Act to cap how many homes Wall Street can own statewide and give families a real shot at buying before institutional investors can bid.”

Among the report’s findings. 

• The collapse of local financing weakened smaller builders. Decades of deregulation, bank failures, and financial consolidation cut off the community-based lenders local homebuilders relied on. From 1980 to 1994, Arizona had among the highest bank failure rates in the country; by 1993, all of its major commercial banks were owned by out-of-state companies.
• Big builders won’t fill the gap.The top ten homebuilders accounted for about 44% of Phoenix-area home closings in 2004; last year, roughly 70%. Because they are publicly traded, big builders boost profits through pacing production and banking land rather than maximize the number of homes built.
• Wall Street seized on the shortage. In 2010, foreclosures represented nearly two in five Phoenix family home transactions, and  home values more than halved. Rapid population growth, low property taxes, and landlord-friendly laws, made the metro-area an investor target. In 2013, Invitation Homes,issued its first single-family rental securitization backed primarily by Arizona homes; within two years, over 8,000 Phoenix properties backed SFR securitizations.
• The end of Zillow’s “iBuying” program intensified buyouts. After its house-flipping program delivered lackluster returns, Zillow sold thousands of homes in 2021 to three of the country’s largest single-family rental owners. At the height of the pandemic-era boom, institutional investors purchased nearly a third of single-family rentals in Arizona — the second-highest share in the nation—  while Phoenix home prices surged 60%, and median rents rose 29%.
• Investors now own a substantial share of the market An estimated 13–14% ofPhoenix single-family rentals — roughly 33,000 to 72,000 homes — are investor owned. Invitation Homes leads the region, owning approximately 9,200 properties.
• Build-to-rent threatens to deepen the problem. Phoenix is the national epicenter of build-to-rent development,accounting for more than 40% of all such units built in the Western U.S. These developments put entire neighborhoods that might otherwise have offered homeownership opportunities under corporate control, and each additional build-to-rent property within 150 meters increases house-price growth by 2–3%.
• Renters get squeezed. Tenants of corporate landlords face among the most aggressive eviction practices in the country. In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission reached a $48 million settlement with Invitation Homes over allegations involving deceptive lease costs, failure to inspect homes before move-ins, and charging hidden fees. 

The report calls for policymakers to reverse the policies that gave Wall Street its stranglehold on Phoenix homes. Its recommendations include: expanding lending facilities for local homebuilders and taxing land hoarding; banning corporate ownership of single-family homes and requiring institutional investors to divest existing inventories; giving owner-occupants and nonprofits first-look rights on foreclosed homes while barring large institutional investors from buying them; eliminating tax breaks that encourage institutional ownership and adopting a land-value tax; strengthening enforcement against corporate landlords’ unfair and deceptive practices; reforming zoning and permitting barriers; and passing Arizona’s Own Something and Be Happy Act (HB 2325), which would cap institutional investors at 50 single-family homes statewide, prohibit bulk purchases, and give families a 60-day window to bid before investors can. 

The paper is being released in conjunction with a live-event in Phoenix with Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari on Thursday Sept. 10 from 5:30-7:30 PM PT at the McKinley Club (734 W. Polk Street). Reporters are encouraged to attend. More information and RSVP here. 

Read the full report here.

Read our past report on how Wall Street has warped single-family homebuilding here.

Read our analysis on institutional investors’ impact in Atlanta’s housing market here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.