Washington, D.C. — In response to news that Senators Elizabeth Warren and 16 other Democratic Senators have introduced the American Homeownership Act of 2026, which would end major federal tax deductions and other benefits for Wall Street landlords and reinvest the savings in increasing supply and programs to help families become homeowners, while also increasing antitrust scrutiny, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.
“In the midst of a severe housing affordability crisis, the government wastes billions in taxpayer dollars subsidizing rich Wall Street landlords instead of boosting housing supply. This bill strips out those tax breaks, redirects the savings to building affordable housing, and gives antitrust enforcers better tools to prevent market concentration before it becomes entrenched,” said Laurel Kilgour, Research Manager at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Congress should send this legislation to the President’s desk, and he must sign it immediately.”
As Economic Liberties identified in its November 2025 whitepaper “Capital Crunch,” the disappearance of reliable financing for neighborhood homebuilders—and Wall Street’s reorientation of surviving large homebuilders towards maximizing margins, and away from abundant production—is the primary cause of America’s insufficient supply of single-family homes for sale.
But institutional investors’ increasing activity in the single-family home market is also a serious concern for Americans’ homeownership prospects in some areas—while also subjecting renters to landlords who are often repeat bad actors. The share of home purchases made by institutional investors has surged 900% from 2012 to 2022, from about 40,000 to 415,000. Although institutional investors own only a small percentage of SFR homes nationwide, there are at least a dozen cities where they command double-digit market shares, including Atlanta, Indianapolis, Raleigh, and Tampa. As Economic Liberties laid out in a recent fact sheet, these trends are in large part due to the fact that single-family homes are increasingly “built-for-rent,” or built for sale to institutional investors rather than individual homebuyers. Finally, in addition to restricting supply, institutional homeownership exposes renters to landlords who are more likely to hike rents, charge junk fees (as evidenced by the Federal Trade Commission’s 2024 case against Invitation Homes), and pursue aggressive evictions.
The rise of institutional homeownership can be traced back to policy failures in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, as explained in “Capital Crunch.” The American Homeownership Act would begin to turn the page on this chapter of history by eliminating depreciation and mortgage interest deductions for these investors. Private equity funds, hedge funds, private real estate investment trusts, big investment managers, and other corporate entities that buy up more than 50 dwelling units for rent would no longer get tax breaks for buying up housing of any kind, including manufactured homes (which have become a popular target for private equity in particular). These same entities will be precluded from getting federally backed mortgages or buying foreclosed homes sold by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and federal agencies like the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Using the proceeds from these savings, the bill will reinvest in new housing construction and fund programs to help an estimated 5 million families buy their own homes.
The bill also strengthens antitrust enforcement, by ending real estate reporting loopholes and codifying a presumption that acquisitions involving residential property that would result in more than 30% market share are illegal, making it easier for enforcers to prevent anticompetitive consolidation in the market.
Read “Capital Crunch: How the Fall of Local Finance and the Rise of Shareholder Primacy Warped Single-Family Homebuilding in America — And What to Do About It,” here.
Read “Fact Sheet: How Build-To-Rent Homes Limit Single-Family Home Supply and Squeeze Affordability,” here.
Learn more about Economic Liberties here.