Sen. Warnock's ban on private equity firms buying single-family homes becomes federal law
As CBS News Atlanta previously reported, more than one in four single-family rental homes in metro Atlanta are owned by large corporate investors — more than 72,000 homes — giving the region one of the highest concentrations of institutional ownership anywhere in the United States.
Housing advocates have argued that those companies can outbid families with cash offers, reducing the number of homes available to first-time buyers while contributing to higher home prices and rents.
Warnock has repeatedly cited those trends in pushing the legislation, saying corporate investors have increasingly treated homes as financial assets instead of places for families to live.
https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/sen-warnocks-ban-on-private-equity-firms-buying-single-family-homes-becomes-federal-law/Open linkView original on discuss.online
109 replies
This does absolutely nothing. As others pointed out, they'll just create new shells. Even if they lowered prices somehow it would be pointless. There is no money or jobs anymore.
Obligatory:
Wait, why does that "email" have three To's and two CC's (unless those three people share onn email address)
???, thats how email functions lol
You can even do distribution groups with hundreds of people
Wat?
Have you ever seen an email thread?
Worked in any business ever?
Ok, sorry, I haven't.
Here's a simple way to think about how email address lines work for business emails:
To: The main audience. These are the people the message is intended for and who may need to respond or take action.
Cc (Carbon copy): People who should stay informed but are not the main audience. Think of this as an FYI list. If someone in Cc has information that would help everyone, they can use Reply All and join the conversation.
Bcc (Blind carbon copy): People who should receive the email without other recipients knowing they were included. Recipients in Bcc are hidden from everyone else and are not included in future replies unless someone adds them again. For instance, if you're sending an announcement to a large group, you might put everyone in Bcc to keep their email addresses private and ensure that replies are sent to the original sender only. Another common use is keeping a manager informed without making them part of the ongoing email discussion.
So for every 350 homes they make a new LLC or shell company.
You didn't expect this to actually fix the problem did you? Sorry, too much money to be made.
I mean any progress is a step in the right direction. It just seems that these days are Democrats are very performative. Most of their legislation has no teeth and is just for show. Enforcement of any policies is basically none.
Sounds about right, most policies are passed on their performative aspects. When you really sit down and read the law you often find the performative reason that was cited isn't even true.
Unfortunately both sides do something similar, It seems that modern legislative practices lead to incredibly broad and poorly written policy that can be interpreted and almost any direction. I think it’s like that by design. But it’s so watered down and meaningless that it’s just a feel good title with a bunch of bullshit stuffed into it.
Yes, I do believe this is done on purpose. This combined with shitty concepts like omnibus bills with riders ensures policy gets passed that should have never seen the light of the day.
I honestly can’t believe how much bullshit they stuff into the budget every year. I guess it’s just been accepted that every must pass tight Bill has to be stuffed chock full of the worst most vile stupid legislation ever. No politician wants to risk their career election campaign trying to pass some dystopian corporate bootlicker policies. So they just shove it every budget bill hoping that no one will read the thousands of pages to catch their loopholes.
*always performative. There's a reason schumers name is on Epstein's blackmail list.
Are they stripping them of the ones they already have?
There was some concern this was more of a bail out since the housing market is doing a weird quiet crash thing and private companies want out anyway. I'm not sure what ended up occurring, but I'm skeptical that it's anything good.
Hopefully they're just being taxed at increased rates that make profit unviable and allows them to unload the houses normally. I don't really know how the legislation works though.
This solution makes sense. They need to phase out the existing rules properly, no matter how wrong they were to begin with.
Tax them from 10% til 100% over 5 years, and let them sell off as they go through that time spand maybe?
It's a great way to get younger people to stop caring when they can't actually afford to own anything. This is a step in the correct direction, corporate gatekeeping needs to end, we need to give people opportunities to own. If someone rents, borrows, and leases their entire life, why would they care if it all goes to shit?
And let's not forget: the younger people of today are the older people of tomorrow. Except for those who are handed things due to generational wealth, we're looking at an extremely large contingent of the country (world?) which will own nothing. Perhaps the largest ever such contingent. Does not seem like a sustainable situation over any extended term.
If Trump didn't veto it, there must be some loopholes large enough to drive a battleship through.....
Senate vote was 85-5
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin Mike Lee of Utah Rand Paul of Kentucky Rick Scott of Florida Tommy Tuberville of Alabama
Guessing Trump knew it would be a losing battle to veto it. Also, it should make him look better with him having to do nothing but stay out of the way
Rick Scott voting against his constituency?
Shocker.
- A Floridian, speaking sarcastically
Fuck Rick Scott to hell and back. He is in it for the $$$ and nothing else, does not give even one fuck about the people of Florida. I cannot imagine voting for him, such a high level scammer.
Damn, fuck Russian Ron Johnson. The democrats really left Barnes out to dry against Ron Johnson and he ran an awful campaign. It still blows my mind that the same election elected Democrat Evers for governor and Ron Johnson. What a wild split ticket.
It sure would be cool if Ron Johnson would go grab a drink with Lady G and Mitchy boy. I truly hate that man.
it was also an opportunity for everyone to kumbayah and get some good press on addressing affordability
This won't do anything people who read actual news know the private equity is a convenient boogeyman hiding the refusal of state government to do their job an remove local control and mandate zoning reform and more housing of all types and sizes. Also it's 2026 and people are still posting tv news outlets to the internet.
Private Equity's housing stock is actually pretty small when compared against so-called "Mom and Pop" landlords. This law creates exceptions for Mom-and-Pops that own ten properties or less.
PE accounts for an average of 2.4% of home ownership in the US. Mom-and-Pops take up another 6.5%, nearly 3x as much. This law will have an outsized impact on sunbelt cities where PE owns double-digits portions of the market, but most of the country won't perceive these changes at all.
Finally! I've watched these fucking companies buy up every house in my neighborhood that came up for sale. IMO when this trend started was when the people's dream of ever owning a home got destroyed. Warnock for President?
We’ve had low interest rates propping up the stock market and speculative bubbles for far too long. This is why there has been too much cheap capital chasing returns over the last decade.
It’s a bubble of its own which we are starting to see pop in a number of sectors. (Private Equity firms and banks starting to show signs of strain, zombie businesses going under, AI bubble running out of capital sources and now tapping retail investors, crypto crash, etc.)
However this president is intent on getting us to 0% interest rates which will reverse that progress. Once the asset class can tap into essentially free money all of this progress will be undone.
If PE can get free capital every 7 years and sit on an appreciating asset while making renters pay for it, they will. If PE has to refinance that asset every 7 years at 7% or 8% interest suddenly the math doesn’t work especially in a slumping housing market.
Can we apply that to farms too? If you aren't actually farming, whether you have a corporation or not, you can't buy farmland. Sorry, JD.
Good! Those fucking passive income vultures.
Now pair with legislation that says all existing corporate owned properties are taxed at 100% of any revenue derived from ownership of those properties
I'd start with taxing 100% property taxes of empty properties as a logical next step.
I get where you're coming from and an for the sentiment, but that will need at least some sort of caveat or having to sell the house of a lost family member will be become very dangerous.
Or buying a foreclosure and making it livable.
"Corporate owned" would be defined in a way that allowed for earnest actual single human/family scenarios, but also stopped little mini tyrants from trying to become a local menace through loopholes.
Cool. Both.
That’s genuinely fantastic news.
The skeptic, pessimistic part of me now wants to know how BlackRock et al will get around this with creative corporate and financial shell games, because I’m absolutely sure they will try to do just that.
Blackrock splits into redrock, orangerock, yellowrock, etc.
All owned by rainbowrock (a blackrock® company).
Because it's not a ban on private equity purchasing homes, it's a limit of 350 going forward. Because as if that limit isn't absurdly high (it should be more like 3) it's also unlikely to hold up in court. They should have levied increasing taxes.
Frankly the limit should be 0 for private equity. The only exception should be for mortgage lenders (for obvious reasons) who should also not be ownable by PE or VC.
It should not be legal for corporations to own a residential property outside of the context of a mortgage. Any corporation (here, including banks) owning a residence for the purpose of rental income should be flat out illegal as well.
If it were me, I would have just passed a federal tax on property where whatever the local city, state, and county taxes are, there's also a federal levy of property taxes of the exact same amount multiplied by the number of properties each taxpaying owner owns - 1.
So if you own one home, you pay no additional taxes.
If you and your spouse own two homes, you pay no additional taxes.
But if you own five 1 million dollar properties as a single person and the property taxes on each of those properties is $5,000, then instead of paying a total of $25,000 in property taxes as a single homeowner, you would pay
$5,000 * 4 * 4 + $5,000, or $85,000/yr.
That $60,000 a year difference for being a multiple homeowner would go into a fund specifically to provide grants and assistance for low-income renters and first-time homebuyers.
This would make it so that owning multiple homes becomes a sign of affluence.
And it would put a steep price curve on going over the limit of even moderately reasonable amounts of homes to own as a person.
Adding one additional $1 million home with a $5,000 property tax annual on it would actually add another $45,000/yr to the taxes that you would pay compared to someone who only owns that single home, and doing it this way, make sure that the scale of increasing taxes that you would pay on home ownership would become exponentially prohibitive.
It would also ensure that at a very reasonable point, no matter how much you charged for rent, for any property you own, once you own more than four, it becomes impossible to actually profit off of multiple home ownership, because very quickly, no renter in the universe would pay what you need to earn in order to cover the taxes off of owning that property.
This is part of my pitch to become president in 2032 when I become eligible.
Oh, slight correction. Add the original taxes to the numbers I generated because the federal taxes are separate from the city, state, and local taxes.
So in the first example, $85,000 plus $25,000 equals $110,000 a year to own five $1 million properties at $5,000 a year property taxes.
And in the second example, $130,000 plus $30,000 equals $160,000 a year to own the sixth one.
A starter home where I live is almost 1 mil. The prices would go down if any real legislation passed but a 1 mil home isn't the end all be all.
You mean it's legal for mortgagerock?
How do you differentiate between private equity and regular corporate ownership though? Because building and operating apartment buildings takes a lot more money than the average individual has.
Yeah, so to me, that sounds like a great argument for public funding of housing.
We don’t have to make them like old Soviet-bloc mega apartment complexes (I admit I am fond of some of the exterior aesthetics and building arrangements the Soviets tended to do, but the insides were more or less concrete shoeboxes (“to each according to their needs”, ostensibly, but imo in practice it was often far too minimal, and often not even truly meeting a given family’s needs)).
And we don’t need and shouldn’t expect them to be massive profit generators (much like we don’t need and shouldn’t expect mass transit to be a massive profit generator). We could build quite comfortable public housing, pair it with substantially improved public physical and mental healthcare, and not only effectively solve homelessness overnight, but simultaneously make a long-term investment in the viability of American society (including but not limited to birth rates, happiness indices, GDP (more people doing well = more people able to contribute to the pool = gdp go up), education, residential ownership, diminishing crime… we can go on).
Oops, I slipped into “we should be more socialist” mode lol
I dunno this plan sounds like it opens up a whole lot more Individual Freedoms ©️™️ 🦅 🇺🇸 for more individual people!. . . As a group demographic comprised of individuals, of course. 😉
(Y'know, for your upcoming campaign. Rooting for you!)
An important distinction here is that BlackRock is not a PE firm. They are an asset management company. Now, that's not to say they're not in the business of buying up homes, just that they're not PE. Blackstone is the PE firm which has been buying up single family homes. They're different companies. Both evil though.
They'll buy up property management companies who will then buy the houses to rent out.
The law actually does prevent shell games as written, but they can still buy larger homes and complexes and up to 350 at that.
Perhaps now we will see those Scifi Megastructures that eventually fall into anarchy and become ungovernable black markets lmao.
It's actually not bad, prevents shell games, but still allows them to keep properties they already own and allows up to 350 new properties larger than single family.
A potential hack would be offering loans to businesses to buy 350, and if theyvreally want to push the limits they can try to buy the smaller companies which just so happens to transfer their properties.
Change in the definition of what a single family home is in 3, 2, 1....
If there is no enforcement then why bother to write laws down?
I see an awful lot of non-enforcement of laws that are already on the books.
Yeah, what's the gaping truck-sized loophole no one's reporting on yet?
They're not going to explain that right away. They wouldn't want the poors to take adavantage of it.
Maybe there is a housing crash coming and the will of the people no longer conflicts with special interest groups.
If they don't plan to buy anyway, they will throw a bine so the public can make bad investments at will.
Probably simply that affiliated companies don't count towards that total number. So they can make an infinite number of subsidiaries as long as they're individually under 350 properties each.
Uh, no, not subsidiaries. Partnerships maybe but not even contractors. Most they could do is offer loans.
Apparently PE was already getting out of the market? A how money works video said that they represented ~25% of recent home sales despite having ~7% of homes.
Finally some good news!
I’ve become so jaded that I’m sitting here thinking, “if this was actually going to work the private equity firms would’ve never let it pass.
They realize the market is at peak so they're going to get out anyway.
Or, better theory, they've grandfathered in existing arrangements so it's just keeping out additional PE firms.
My first thought was "what is a private equity firm" really and does the law have provisions for firms that are owned by private equity.
If some numbered corporation in Delaware owns a house and private equity owns a controlling stake in that firm can it still own housing.
What I'm asking is what is the blood quantum of a cooperation.
Thank goodness, this just prevents them from acquiring additional housing.
Be exceptionally cautious of legislation like this, the housing market is becoming a more and more obvious bubble, companies like BlackRock are going to try to twist every legislation like this into a bailout. They'll want government to take the houses from them, by buying them all "at market rate", despite the reality that these firms would never be able to offload all those houses into the market without cratering the market rate.
Why are we still linking to CBS news? Can't trust that shit.
Alternative to CBS.
I'm out of the loop, what's wrong with CBS news?
CBS is officially a mouthpiece of the Conservative Propaganda Machine, along with Fox News. Their news is now directly promoting the MAGA agenda. Scott Pelley, a highly regarded investigative journalist quit after being pressured to included unsourced and unverified claims in his reports, which means those reporters who remain, are succumbing to those pressures to report MAGA lies
Further, MAGA propaganda is seeping into their programming. Law enforcement is always righteous, even when they break the rules to protect America. The enemies are always standard MAGA boogeymen like domestic terrorists from Portland, or Iranian terrorist sleeper cells, even though none of that has ever actually existed in America. And that's just the stuff that is happening with existing shows, future shows will be much more direct.
CBS was bought by the Ellisons, who also own Oracle. Larry Ellison is the second richest man in the world, and a Sociopathic Oligarch with a vicious MAGA streak, and his son is chip off the old psychopathic block. He has a lifelong reputation as a proud and enthusiastic asshole, and LOVES to do damage and hurt people for profit. His son is just as arrogant, and as we've seen, the Nepo-Babies are often worse than their parents.
Now these people have bought CNN as well, one of the Right's biggest targets, and they will start dismantling it, too. Now they want to buy Warner Bros, so they can start manipulating our heritage, and continue to manipulate public opinion through entertainment.
The silver lining is that MAGA is virtuosically incompetent, and they'll eventually screw this up. If their arrogance doesn't do them in, then their complete misunderstanding of what people find entertaining will. Conservative entertainment is ALWAYS heavy-handed, humorless, and boring. They will ultimately be brought down by their own bad personalities.
There are good reasons that MAGA is so despised, and they aren't going to translate into entertaining programming.
Hoo boi, I've got some bad news.
Basically after a bunch of sales and crap, CBS is now also owned by the Ellisons, and also walking fascist self-contradiction Barri Weiss is heading CBS News.
Trump stooges, billionaires, accelerationist, anti-everyone, zionist types. . . And they're buying up every major media outlet without being stopped. It's pretty disgusting.
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/12/nx-s1-5537152/cbs-news-ellison-steps-appease-trump
Thanks, I had not heard about it.
Are private equity firms, as defined in the bill, actually buying homes? Or is the private entity type doing that, not classified as an equity firm?
Rich people have nothing to do with their stolen money but buy up assets. It's a runaway disaster for everyone. The rich are pricing people out of being alive and we act like we can't do anything about it. At some point, perhaps gen Alpha, will have to do something about it or simply die.
In Canada, these houses are all being bought by Mom and pop Boomer investors, leveraging equity of houses they paid 12 acorns for.
So the same thing but at the smallest investor scale.
how bout ban them in general, since they are ruining alot of companies.
Now make it retroactive.
I knew he'd do some good. :) I was hopeful when Georgia elected him. That hope wasn't misplaced.
I wonder if Trump simply misunderstood the execution of a Pocket Veto when he refused to explicitly sign or veto the law.
Also, a little nervous at the prospect of the SCOTUS deciding to rewrite the rules on the pocket veto. Or whether they'll just find some other bullshit reason to overturn this law.
Good on Warnock for getting this language through a minefield of a legislature. If there's a bright spot on the horizon for 2027, its guys like this in high office. But I'm not pinning my hopes given how absurd the deck has been stacked against the working class of late.
ok, so this Bill was passed by a Supermajority (2/3+ majority) in Congress, which means that it doesn't require the President's approval to become law. While his signature would be nice and expedient, it's it's required. So...
After a prescribed period of time (which has now passed) it becomes law automatically (which has now happened). Yay!
Under normal circumstances, a law in Congress gets passed by a simple majority (51%). That requires the President to sign off (or they can veto). A lack of signature can act as a "pocket veto" during which the Bill will expire and require a new House/Senate vote to resubmit. But that didn't happen this time.
Trump got handed a slam-dunk Supermajoority-approved Bill that he decided not to sign and hold hostage for his crybaby shitty-diaper election cheating bill. He lost that fight, and this Supermajority-approved housing bill has now been approved anyway. He could have vetoed it, but it just would have gone back to Congress who would have, again, Supermajority voted to approve it, overriding his veto, and embarrassing him further when it passed anyway.
So fuck Trump and his Election Cheating Act, and we get this (weak-ass) bipartisan housing bill anyway.
The President can manually veto it. But with that much support, the legislature would presumably override.
A pocket veto would let the president deny the bill from becoming law by refusing to give the legislature an opportunity to override it. But with Congress in session, that shouldn't work.
I mean, it looks like he's finding other ways to cheat. This election will likely go down as one of the gnarliest since Kennedy beat Nixon.
yeah, I literally just explained that
I just explained that, too
no argument there, but he's been been pulling this crap for a decade now. lest your forget Jan 6, 2021. at this point, anyone who doesn't get this (in the USA) is actively participating as part of the opposition.
He's been trying. I don't think he's ever been in such a strong position to outright steal elections. Even Bush Jr didn't have it this good.
He’s been trying and failing for over a decade now, and he has an entire circus tent full of incompetent ass clowns. Even Bush Junior at least had competent people by his side. Even Bush Junior was capable of winning two consecutive terms. Bush W never tried to overthrow the government.
What on earth makes you think that Trump could ever do better than W? shit, even George W. Bush at least served in the Texas National Guard. (how dare you make me defend that turd). W had it way better because he never earned the amount of disapproval and hate that Trump has earned. No president has ever been hated as much as Trump.
You’ve been drinking too much Kool-Aid, or you are just so young, that you don’t remember being alive when George W. Bush was still president you didn’t live through all of that. But don’t speak as if you’re knowledgeable about the facts, because you’re very obviously are not.
Trump never got anything that someone didn’t give him. Even most of the GOP has turned against him at this point. You haven’t been paying attention.
Stop spreading the lies of the fascists, stop being their tool
It's certainly been something of a joke that Trump needed Obama/Biden in office to steal elections.
But go out to Florida or Mississippi or Arizona or Ohio and you'll find enough election irregularities to swing a race. Texas very famously shut down over 100 polling locations just last year. Mail in voting has been radically parred since the 2020 sweep. In fact, 2021 set the record for most restrictions on voting passed in a single year.
So the GOP underbelly seems to be on the case, even when the Trump administration fumbles.
I mean, I voted in 2000, and got to watch the Brooks Brothers Riot in real time.
But that pales beside J6, even if a young Kavanaugh succeeded where an elderly Roger Stone failed.
Liberals simply will not accept that their system of elections is compromised to a permanent end, even as the SCOTUS power washes minority voting districts off the map.
Quick! Someone dangle something shiny in front of him before the window closes!
Maybe hold an award ceremony from “FIFÔ. They are award him the FIFÅ Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. That might distract him long enough…
Great, now do apartments.
Gonna need more than 45 DNC for that.
Does this not apply to at least some apartments? And a lot more now that it just became federal law?
The headline says it applies to single family homes.
Homes, not houses. An apartment can be a home.
I was more focused on the "single-family" part. But I have no idea what it really covers. I don't think apartments are considered single-family homes since there are usually more than one unit.
No, I get that. People hear “single-family” and think that would only apply to a house, when single families often live in single, unit apartments. Just be glad you’ve never been so poor that you had to know about this. But tens of millions of families have never known anything other than this.
This bill is huge and convoluted, and covers rather a lot and a lot of different places
Canada needs to do this.
Its interesting the way legislation gets copied around the world - watching the cannabis reform was a great example.
Mamdani might also lead the way in a similar sense I'm hoping.
Hopefully both of these blaze some trails for the majority of us...
I'll note that this is happening as corporate owners are net sellers, not buyers. There are better uses for their money (they think) than holding onto houses now. This is good for the future, and nice in certain areas that were getting choked to death. But... corporate owners only have ~3-9% of the single-family home market (source). Every little bit helps, though we need cities to fix up zoning and increase density. (There's incentives for them to do that now iirc, so push for density on the ballot this fall!)
They need to be forced to sell en mass and the limit needs to be was lower like 5 not 350
It's a long bill, but the details for this ban can be found in Title X almost at the bottom:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6644/text#d10163e18706-intro-1
The only way we're ever getting out of this mess is for increased density in urban areas and for people to grow out of this desire for a single family home with a yard and a driveway.
Private equity really the problem? In Canada, these are all mom and pop boomer investors.
Canada passed a law against foreign buyers but it did nothing because it was <3% of buyers, but it made everyone feel better.
you know waht. its a start. We dont need to solve it all in one pass, but doing nothing isnt the solution
But actually ignoring the real problem and making panacea laws doesn't help anyone. You can pass a law banning intergalactic space travellers from buying houses, but is the point to do something, or just look like you are?
The thing is, the power is in the hands of existing home owners who financially benefit from a shortage of housing supply.
Solving the housing crisis and homeowners growing their equity are two goals totally at odds with one another.
No government in north america or the eu is ever going to tell the haves "good job paying off your mortgage, but I'm afraid the value of your home is now hundreds of thousands of dollars less than what you paid for it".
As long as housing is considered an investment it will never be affordable.
It’s a pretty high limit, so no impact on small investors.
I don’t see it making much difference, but maybe it’s just not as common where I live. It’s a start though. I don’t think there’s going to be a single fix but maybe enough small fixes will add up
I wonder how this is going to affect https://arrived.com/ -- I have some minor investments there I'd prefer not to lose.
Still, this is quite good news, for exactly the reasons Warnock says, even if I lose every red cent in my arrived account.
Ewwwww. I sincerely hope every penny you gave them vanishes. You don't deserve it back for investing in something so slimy.
Eh, one of the founders is a friend of a friend, I don't think it's "slimy". Though I have complained about some aspects both publicly and privately to him.
It was easier to get into than to actually buy my own property, but there's been a lot of changes to it since I bought my first shares of a local (to me) property.
You say while participating in something that actively makes it harder for people to buy their own property.
hopefully it negatively affects that investment quite heavily