February 24, 2026
One of the great housing industry debates of 2026 may center on institutional investors and their impact on housing affordability. The arguments will ping pong between critics who say corporations that buy homes to turn them into rentals are squeezing families out of home ownership. Proponents will argue they’re providing affordable housing among a shortage.
The dispute will make for some interesting bedfellows. Some Democrats are already supporting President Donald Trump’s recent executive order that seeks to ban large investors from acquiring single-family homes. Some Republicans are pushing back against the potential policy change.
It’s a particularly big issue in Tampa. John Burns Consulting estimates that institutional investors own 19% of all single-family rentals in Tampa. In 2025, the Tampa Bay Times updated Buying Up the Bay, a seven-part series on institutional investors. The series noted that while investors are not to blame for the region’s inflated rental and home prices, experts say they exacerbate the issue with tactics that shut out individual buyers.
Staff writers Rebecca Liebson and Teaghan Simonton wrote that corporate-owned home buying also has been linked to “neglected property maintenance and higher eviction rates.”
Yet they also included a defense from the National Rental Home Council, which argues that single-family rentals provide stability and space for families looking to rent, especially those who have moved to the area for new jobs.
“What we’ve seen in Tampa is what we’ve seen in other high-growth markets — places like Atlanta, Nashville, some of the Texas markets,” council CEO David Howard told the Tampa Bay Times. “These are markets that have been characterized by robust levels of in-migration, population growth. … All of this pushes the demand for rental housing.”
President Trump believes stunting the number of institutional investors can bring down the cost of housing. He summed up its opposition to corporate home ownership at a January economic conference in Davos, Switzerland, emphatically stating, “Homes are built for people, not for corporations.” There is, however, nuance in his executive order, which includes an exception for Build-to-Rent communities.
A recent New York Times story stated that such communities can help by increasing the availability of quality rental housing. John Burns Research and Consulting director of research Rick Palacios, Jr., told the paper, “Build-to-Rent is really a natural steppingstone for homeownership.”
So, what lies ahead in this great debate? It’s uncertain right now. The president’s executive order requires congressional action to be fully put into effect. The executive order also instructs the Treasury Department to produce a definition of what constitutes a big institutional buyer and operator of single-family rentals.
In a statement to FOX13, the National Rental Home Council said it looks forward to working with the Trump Administration and other policymakers to expand rental options and create pathways to home ownership.
If Congress codifies the executive order, its impact is still unclear. Lesley Deutch, the Managing Principal at John Burns Research, told the TBBA in January the impact of the proposed ban on home prices would be negligible, given the percentage of homes owned by corporate investors and the percentage currently being bought by home investors.
The numbers, however, put Tampa Bay and Florida well ahead of the national trend, and that status could make both the region and the state a bellwether leader for how this plays out nationally.