United States White House orders agencies and GSEs to restrict large institutional investors from acquiring single-family homes

The White House issued an executive order directing federal agencies to curb large institutional investors’ ability to buy single-family homes that could otherwise be purchased by individual owner-occupants. The order sets a government-wide policy to preserve the supply of single-family homes for families and limit federal actions that facilitate institutional acquisition. Within 30 days, the Secretary of the Treasury must develop definitions of “large institutional investor” and “single-family home” for implementation purposes. Within 60 days, the Secretaries of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs, the Administrator of General Services, and the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency must issue guidance to prevent agencies and government-sponsored enterprises, to the maximum extent permitted by law, from providing, approving, insuring, guaranteeing, securitizing, or facilitating covered acquisitions and from disposing of federal assets in ways that transfer single-family homes to large institutional investors; the guidance must also promote sales to individual owner-occupants through anti-circumvention provisions, first-look policies, and disclosure requirements, with narrowly tailored exceptions including build-to-rent rental communities. Further measures include a Treasury review of existing rules and guidance on institutional acquisitions or holdings for possible revision, and antitrust review by the Attorney General and the Federal Trade Commission Chairman of substantial acquisitions and coordinated vacancy or pricing strategies in local single-family rental markets. The Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative, Political and Public Affairs must prepare a legislative recommendation to codify the policy.