JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — President Donald Trump says he plans to take executive action and push Congress to pass legislation to prevent corporations from buying up single family homes.
The issue has been especially evident in Jacksonville, which has ranked among the worst for rent increases in recent years.
In 2020, five percent of single-family homes purchased in Jacksonville were sold to institutional investors.
Fast forward one year and that number ballooned to 21 percent.
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“These corporate entities coming into Jacksonville, and they’re buying up hundreds and thousands of single-family homes. They’re converting the homes into rental properties. They’re bundling the rental properties into portfolios and they offer these portfolios as investment opportunities for their clients,” said Dr. David Jaffee.
Dr. Jaffee is a UNF Sociology professor and leads the JAX Rental Housing Project, which has been researching the rise of corporate homeownership in Jacksonville for the past several years.
He suggested the corporate homebuying trend is arguably the leading driver of local rent increases, which jumped between 30 and 40 percent between 2021 and 2022 alone.
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He explained corporate owners purchase homes to generate revenue for investors, oftentimes by jacking up rent, increasing fees and neglecting maintenance.
“You want to reduce the costs as much as possible,” said Jaffee.
Now, President Trump has announced he intends to take executive action to ban corporations from purchasing more homes, saying in a social media post, “People live in homes, not corporations”.
“It is a winning political issue among the population,” said Jaffee.
Dr. Jaffee said there are already some proposals floating around Congress, but they’ve failed to gain traction.
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With the President’s backing he hopes attitudes in the legislative branch could change.
In the short-term though, he said taking meaningful executive action would likely be complicated, but there could be some options on the table.
Those include increased taxes and fees on corporate home purchases or a full blown moratorium.
“You really want to disincentivize the investors that are buying up these properties,” said Jaffee.
The President indicated he’ll be providing more details about the actions he intends to take during his speech in Davos two weeks from now.
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