Sens. Josh Hawley and Jeff Merkley announced the Homes for American Families Act on Thursday, a bipartisan bill that would prohibit large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, townhouses, and condominiums across the United States. The legislation arrives on the heels of President Trump's State of the Union address this week, where he urged Congress to make his executive order banning the practice permanent.
The bill is simple in its logic: American families should not have to outbid hedge funds for a starter home. That this requires legislation at all tells you how far the housing market has drifted from its original purpose.
During his address, Trump put a face on the problem. He introduced Rachel Wiggins, a mother of two from Houston, who placed bids on 20 homes and lost every single one to institutional investors who bypassed inspections and paid all cash. Trump told the chamber:
"Stories like this are why last month I signed executive order to ban large Wall Street investment firms are buying up in the thousands single family homes. And now I'm asking Congress to make that ban permanent, because homes for people, really that's what we want, we want homes for people, not for corporations. Corporations are doing just fine."
Twenty bids. Not two. Not five. Twenty. Everyone lost to a firm that converted the property into a rental. This is the housing market that millions of Americans now navigate, one where a young family with a mortgage pre-approval letter is competing against entities with bottomless capital and no intention of ever living in the home. Breitbart reported.
Hawley framed the legislation in terms that cut straight to the core of the issue:
"Families deserve to be able to buy their own homes and achieve the American dream without competing with big investment companies that irrevocably drive up housing prices. That's why I am introducing legislation to ban Wall Street from buying single family homes once and for all."
Merkley, the Oregon Democrat, struck a similar tone, calling houses in American communities "homes for families, not profit centers for hedge funds." He also acknowledged the political landscape clearly, noting that the bipartisan support gives the effort "wind in our sails."
The two senators have also updated their previous legislation, known as the HOPE for Homeownership Act, which would incentivize Wall Street firms and hedge funds to divest their existing holdings of single-family homes. Together, the measures represent a two-pronged approach: stop the buying, then unwind what's already been bought.
There is a particular kind of economic dislocation that occurs when the most basic unit of American wealth building, a home, gets absorbed into an institutional portfolio. This isn't a niche libertarian debate about free markets. It is a question about what kind of country we intend to be.
When a hedge fund buys a three-bedroom house in a Houston suburb, it doesn't plant roots there. It doesn't join the PTA. It doesn't maintain the property with the care of someone who watches their kids play in the backyard. It extracts rent, defers maintenance to whatever the spreadsheet allows, and moves on to the next acquisition. Multiply that across thousands of homes in hundreds of communities, and you get neighborhoods that look occupied but feel hollow.
Homeownership has been the primary vehicle for middle-class wealth accumulation in this country for generations. The equity a family builds in a home funds retirements, college educations, and small businesses. Every house that disappears into an institutional portfolio is one fewer rung on that ladder.
The push by Trump was reportedly one of the few moments at his State of the Union address that saw both Republicans and left-wing Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, stand and cheer. That alone signals how deeply this issue resonates across ideological lines.
And it should. The conservative case here is straightforward: families and communities are the building blocks of a stable society, and a financial system that systematically prices families out of ownership in favor of institutional landlords undermines both. This isn't hostility toward capitalism. It's a recognition that capital without guardrails can hollow out the very institutions that make free markets worth defending.
Trump signed the executive order last month. Congress now has the chance to write it into law. The bipartisan support exists. The public anger is real. The only question is whether Washington can move at a pace that matches the urgency families like the Wiggins family feel every time they lose another bid.
Rachel Wiggins lost twenty times. The country shouldn't have to lose once more.
