President Trump announced the initiative today via Truth Social.
By Catholics for Catholics
According to the White House’s X account, President Trump has announced an initiative to ban corporations from buying single-family homes, saying, “People live in homes, not corporations.”
In the graphic accompanying the post, President Trump quotes his own Truth Social:
For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans. It is for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations.
The president says he will discuss this initiative further in addition to other “Housing and Affordability proposals” at his speech in Davos in two weeks, referring to the World Economic Forum’s 56th annual meeting taking place from January 19-23, 2026.
In recent years, major Wall Street firms like Blackstone and JP Morgan Chase have been snatching up homes and renting them out. Following the 2008 housing crash, hedge funds and private equity firms launched a large-scale bid to grab real estate as more traditional investors were steering clear. This trend has continued especially as housing prices reached historic highs over the past ten years. A group called Invesco Real Estate gave $5 billion to Mynd Property Management in 2021 to buy 20,000 homes in the United States, according to a CNN report, and that’s just one example.
BREAKING: President Trump announces steps to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 7, 2026
"People live in homes, not corporations." – President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/MvG2mGodR2
The Catechism teaches that owning private property can be an important part of guaranteeing freedom and human dignity:
“…the goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. However, the earth is divided up among men to assure the security of their lives, endangered by poverty and threatened by violence. The appropriation of property is legitimate for guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons and for helping each of them to meet his basic needs and the needs of those in his charge…
…Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good.”
