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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced: 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. Soon afterwards, Senator Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) tweeted that hell “introduce legislation in the Senate to codify this [ban] into law. The general idea has some support on the other side of the aisle as well. Back February 2025, the Humans over Private Equity for Homeownership Act was introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and co-sponsored by Angus King (I-Maine), Chris VanHollen (D-Maryland), Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), and Mark Kelly (D-Arizona). Trumps announcement on Wednesday raises a lot of questions that have yet to be answered. Is this just midterm-year politicking, or a policy proposal that could actually be enacted? Would such a ban be challenged in court? What qualifies as a large institutional investor under Trumps proposed ban? Would it target only scatter-site acquisitions, or also build-to-rent development? Would the ban require institutional investors to sell off their current single-family rental portfolios? Given what we know today, Ive outlined 5 things housing stakeholders should keep in mind. 1. The effects of an institutional single-family homebuying ban would vary sharply by region On a national level, large investorsthose owning at least 100 single-family homesonly own around 1% of total single-family housing stock. That said, in a handful of regional housing markets, institutional and large single-family landlords have a much larger presence. Markets like Phoenix and Atlanta became major hubs for institutional single-family rental investment following the 2008 housing crash as the asset class started to institutionalize. Firms such as Invitation Homes, Progress Residential, and AMH built sizable portfolios in these metros by acquiring distressed homes. That early activity helped establish a reliable local SFR ecosystemincluding property management firms, leasing infrastructure, and contractor networksthat makes it easier to scale and expand single-family rental and build-to-rent operations today. Following the bottom-buying wave, institutional capital remained concentrated in highpopulation-growth Sun Belt markets, where investors anticipated stronger long-term growth in incomes and overall rental growth. Looking ahead, if a ban on institutional homebuying were enacted, its effects would likely be most pronounced in high-growth Sun Belt marketsespecially in specific neighborhoods within metros such as Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Austin, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Charlottewhere institutional ownership is more concentrated. 2. A forced institutional sell-off could temporarily put additional downward pressure on home prices in certain Sun Belt neighborhoods that are already experiencing corrections Many of the Sun Belt markets with the largest institutional footprints are also among those already seeing home-price corrections. If a ban were to force institutions to sell existing holdings, some of these communities in places like Atlanta and Tampa could experience a short-term spike in listings from institutional sell-offs, adding further downward pressure in certain neighborhoods that already have downward home pricing pressure. But in Trumps post, he said he wants to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes. That word, more, could imply that the proposal would NOT include a forced institutional sell-off, making the scenario above less likely. 3. With institutional buying already well below Pandemic Housing Boom levels, theres less demand left that can be squeezed out If Congress were to ban institutional homebuyingand if the policy were to withstand legal challengesit would reduce housing demand that curretly accounts for about 1% of total U.S. homebuying activity. That contraction would have been much larger if the ban had been enacted a few years ago. At the height of the Pandemic Housing Boom, large investorsthose owning at least 100 single-family homesmade up an all-time high of 3.1% of home purchases in Q2 2022, according to John Burns Research and Consulting. That period, at the tail end of the boom, was when yields were particularly attractive as borrowing costs were ultra-low, home prices were soaring, and rents were climbing rapidly. However, since mortgage rates spiked and capital markets shifted, their share has fallen to around 1.0% of transactions over the past three years. The math isnt as favorable right now. 4. A full-blown institutional banincluding a build-to-rent bancould negatively impact U.S. homebuilding One of the biggest questions right now is whether Trumps proposed institutional ban would apply only to institutional scatter-site purchases (i.e., buying existing homes on the market) or also to build-to-rent development (i.e., building communities and homes specifically for rent). If policymakers were to also restrict institutional build-to-rent development, it could have a noticeable negative impact on overall homebuilding later in the decade, in 2027, 2028, and 2029. While single-family build-to-rent is currently only hovering around 8% of total U.S. single-family housing starts, it has driven much of the marginal increase in U.S. single-family housing starts in recent years. Back in pre-pandemic 2017 to 2019, single-family build-to-rent starts made up just around 3% of total U.S. single-family housing starts. Look no further than giant SFR landlord AMH. Not long after interest rates spiked in mid-2022 and the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out, many institutional landlords, including AMH, stopped buying via the MLS. However, AMH continued to barrel ahead building its own single-family rentals. Indeed, 95.7% of institutional landlord AMHs single-family acquisitions through the first three quarters of 2025 came via its in-house homebuilding unit. According to Builder100, AMHs in-house homebuilding unit ranks as the nations 37th-largest homebuilder. Housing analyst Kevin Erdmann, author of the Erdmann Housing Tracker, tells ResiClub that he believes banning institutional homebuying and build-to-rent would negatively impact homebuilding and, in turn, long-term housing affordability. According to Erdmann: American builders have been completing about 1 million new single-family homes annually since 2020about 3 new homes per 1,000 Americans. That is a significant rise from the low of 1.4 new homes per 1,000 residents in 2011. It is roughly equal to the number of new single-family homes that were completed at the bottom of the 1982 recession. And, it is just over half the rate of homes that were typically built throughout the 20th century. Our problem isn’t that there are too many buyers for new homes. Our problem is that we are building too few. The main reason single-family housing construction has been so low is that the federal mortgage agencies that the Trump administration is in complete control of greatly limited access to mortgages after 2008. So there aren’t enough buyers. For decades, before 2008, big Wall Street firms weren’t involved in single-family housing at all because families that can get mortgage funding happily pay more for new single-family homes to live in than Wall Street will pay to rent to them out. The Trump administration could solve that problem by restoring late 20th century underwriting standards at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA. But, instead, they apparently will add even more obstructions to the marketplace so that builders have nobody to sell new homes to while the rents American families have to pay to stay in the lousy supply of homes that we have skyrockets. 5. Most institutionally owned homes are currently occupiedand most of their tenants cant afford to buy right now SFR landlords note that if Congress were to force institutions to sell off their housing stock, it could potentially displace thousands of current tenants who would need to find somewhere else to live. Would those tenants turn around and buy? Even in normal times, many single-family renterswhether their landlord is an institution or a mom-and-popcant afford to buy the home theyre living in. Thats even more true at this point in the housing cycle, as the gap between todays mortgage payments (i.e., a home at todays prices/rates) and market rents has widened. Sean Dobson, CEO of Amherstwhich owns around 43,000 single-family rentalstells ResiClub that “85% of their current tenants would not qualify to buy the homes they live in today. According to Dobson: Blaming institutional ownership for housing unaffordability is inaccurate and gets both the problem and the solution wrong. Americas housing crisis stems from years of policy failure, not the families who rent or the capital that houses them. At Amherst, we serve more than 200,000 residents, nearly 85% of whom would not qualify to buy the homes they live in today. Putting institutional rental housing at risk threatens real families and is unacceptable. Through private, unsubsidized investment, institutional capital restores neglected housing anddelivers real solutions at a time when much of the housing finance system no longer works. Our industry is not the cause of the housing crisis, it is part of the solution.
Category:
E-Commerce
When a gunman began firing inside an academic building on the Brown University campus, students didn’t wait for official alerts warning of trouble. They got information almost instantly, in bits and bursts through phones vibrating in pockets, messages from strangers, rumors that felt urgent because they might keep someone alive. On Dec. 13 as the attack at the Ivy League institution played out during finals week, students took to Sidechat, an anonymous, campus-specific message board used widely at U.S. colleges, for fast-flowing information in real time. An Associated Press analysis of nearly 8,000 posts from the 36 hours after the shooting shows how social media has become central to how students navigate campus emergencies. Fifteen minutes before the university’s first alert of an active shooter, students were already documenting the chaos. Their posts raw, fragmented, and sometimes panicked formed a digital time capsule of how a college campus experienced a mass shooting. As students sheltered in place, they posted while hiding under library tables, crouching in classrooms, and hallways. Some comments even came from wounded students, like one posting a selfie from a hospital bed with the simple caption: #finalsweek. Others asked urgent questions: Was there a lockdown? Where was the shooter? Was it safe to move? It would be days before authorities identified the suspect and found him dead in New Hampshire of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, later linking him to the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. Here’s a look at how the shooting unfolded. Stream of collective consciousness Described by Harvard Magazine as the Colleges stream of collective consciousness, Sidechat allows anyone with a verified university email to post to a campus feed. On most days, the Brown feed is filled with complaints about dining hall food, jokes about professors, and stress about exams fleeting posts running the gamut of student life. On the Saturday afternoon just before the shooting, a student posted about how they wished they could play Minecraft for 60 hours straight. Then, the posts abruptly shifted. Crowds began pouring out of Browns Barus and Holley building, and someone posted at 4:06 p.m.: Why are people running away from B&H? Others quickly followed. EVERYONE TAKE COVER, one wrote. STAY AWAY FROM THAYER STREET NEAR MACMILLAN 2 PEOPLE JUST GOT SHOT IM BEING DEAD SERIOUS, another user wrote at 4:10 p.m. Dozens of frantic messages followed as students tried to fill the information gap themselves. so r we on lockdown or what, one student asked. By the time the university alert was sent at 4:21 p.m., the shooter was no longer on campus a fact Brown officials did not yet know. Where would we be without Sidechat? one student wrote. A university spokesperson said Brown’s alert reached 20,000 people minutes after the school’s public safety officials were notified shots had been fired. Officials deliberately didnt use sirens to avoid sending people rushing to seek shelter into harms way, said the spokesperson, Brian E. Clark, who added Brown commissioned two external reviews of the response with the aim of enhancing public safety and security. Long hours of hiding Long after the sun had set, students sheltered in dark dorm rooms and study halls. Blinds were closed. Doors were barricaded with dressers, beds, and mini fridges. Door is locked windows are locked Ive balanced a metal pipe thing on the handle so if anyone even tries the handle from the outside itll make a loud noise, one student wrote. Students reacted to every sound footsteps in hallways, distant sirens, helicopters overhead. When alerts came, the vibrations and ringtones were jarring. Some feared that names of the dead would be released and that they would recognize someone they knew. Law enforcement moved through campus buildings, clearing them floor by floor. A student who fled Barus and Holley asked whether anyone could text his parents to let them know he had made it out safely. Others said they had left phones behind in classrooms when they fled, unable to reach frantic loved ones. Ironically, those closest to the shooting often had the least information. Many American students expressed emotions hovering between numbness and heartbreak. Just got a text from a friend I havent spoken to in nearly three years, one student wrote. Our last messages? Me checking in on her after the shooting at Michigan State. Multiple students replied, saying theyd had similar experiences. International students posted about parents unable to sleep on the other side of the world. I just want a hug from my mom, one student wrote. Anxiety sets in As the hours dragged on, students struggled with basic needs. Some described urinating in trash cans or empty laundry detergent bottles because they were too afraid to leave their rooms. Others spoke of drinking to cope. I was on the street when it happened & suddenly I felt so scared, one student wrote. I ran and didnt calm down for a while. I feel numb, tired, & about to throw up. Another wrote: Im locked inside! Havent eaten anything today! Im so scared i dont even know if I get out of this alive or dead. Some students posted into the early morning, more than 10 hours into the lockdown, saying they couldnt sleep. Sidechat also documented acts of kindness, including a student going door to door with macaroni and cheese cups in a dark dorm. Information, and its limits Students repeatedly asked the same questions news? sources? and challenged one another to verify what they saw before reposting it. Frankly Id rather hear misinformation than people not report stuff theyve heard, one student wrote. Others pushed back, sharing a Google Doc that would grow to 28 pages where students could find the most updated, verified information. Some posted police scanner transcriptions or warned against relying on artificial intelligence summaries of the developing situation. Professors who rarely post on the app joined the feed, urging caution and offering reassurance. If youre talking about the active situation please add a source!!! one student wrote. But reliable information, students noted, often arrived with a delay. Within about 30 minutes of the shooting, posts incorrectly claimed the shooter had been caught. Reports of more gunshots later proven false continued into the night and the next day, fueling fear and frustration. Asked one studen, what are police doing RIGHT NOW? Replies came quickly. They are trying their best, one person responded. Be grateful, another added. They are putting their lives in danger at this moment for us to be safe. A campus changed Students awoke Sunday to a campus they no longer recognized. It had snowed overnight the first snowfall of the academic year. In post after post, students called the sight unsettling. What was usually a celebration felt instead like confirmation something had irrevocably shifted. It truly hurt seeing the flakes fall this morning, beautiful and tragic, one student wrote. Even as the lockdown lifted, many said they were unsure what to do where they could go, whether dining halls were open, whether it was safe to move. What do I do rn? one student posted. Im losing my mind. Students walked through fresh snow in a daze, heading to blood donation centers. Others noticed flowers being placed at the campus gates and outside Barus and Holley. Many mourned not only the two students killed, but the innocence they felt had been stripped from their campus. Will never see the first snow of the season and not think about those two, one student wrote. With the lockdown ended, students returned to their dorms as Sidechat continued to fill with grief and reflection. Many said Brown no longer felt the same. Snow will always be bloody for me, one person posted. Leah Willingham, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
The dreaded performance review draws the ire of employees and managers alike. Workers fret that reviews fail to capture the full scope of their work, or that they are an unfair assessment of their performance. For managers, reviews can be a time-consuming nuisance and involve the challenging task of delivering tough feedback. But a new study from Cornell University finds that the structure of the performance review can have a huge impact on how workers feel about them. Over the last decade, a number of companies have revamped their performance reviews, seemingly to address the long-standing pain points. The likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have moved away from numerical ratings, while tech companies like Microsoft eliminated stack rankings (reviews that essentially rank employees against their colleagues) and Adobe eliminated reviews altogether. (More recently, however, tech giants like Google and Meta have actually pushed for more stringent evaluations of employees and, in turn, lower ratings.) The Cornell researchers examined how the shift away from numerical reviews has influenced employee sentiment. Emily Zitek, a professor of organizational behavior, and her coauthors analyzed how employees feel about performance reviews that emphasize narrative or qualitative feedback over numerical rankings. The team looked at three different performance review formats: those that exclusively used either numerical ratings or narrative feedback, and those that employed a mix of both. What the researchers found overall was that employees believed performance reviews were, in fact, more fair when they did not have numbers attached and were purely narrative-driven. Even if they’re given kind of average numbers versus wording that says they were very average, it feels more fair if they just see the words and not the numbers, Zitek says. So we thought that was very interesting. We were originally expecting the combined feedback to still be viewed positively, but people didn’t like the numbers within that either. Employees were also more likely to want to improve their performance if they received narrative feedbackand, more notably, if they felt their review was fair. Obviously, one of the goals is improvement, Zitek says. [If youre] just giving people numbers, they don’t know as much about what they need to do to perform better. But there was an exception: If their reviews were very positive, then people perceived them as fair, regardless of format. People love knowing if they’re at the top, Zitek says. More average ratings, on the other hand, seem to betray an employees self-perceptionwhich is why a more middling review feels more palatable if there is no number attached. Psychology research has shown a lot of people think they are above average, or that they’re doing better than they are, Zitek adds. When they get narrative-only feedback, they’re able to maintain that view because there’s no explicit information showing that they didn’t do well. Thats one of the reasons Zitek and her coauthors argue there is still a place for numerical ratings, in spite of the studys findings: If one of the goals of performance reviews is to determine raises and bonuses, then including numbers-based feedback can be importantand arguably more fair. If employees are deluding themselves that they’re performing really well, sometimes it helps to have the number, she says. Sometimes you want employees to realistically know where they stand. And yes, theyre going to be mad about it; they’re not going to think it’s fair. But that could be important. The reality is that many companies still rely on numerical ratings to make decisions about compensationand if they stop using those metrics in reviews, they may still utilize a ranking system without informing employees. If the company is going to want some kind of number anyway, it seems worse to not tell the employee that number, Zitek says. And that’s what some companies are doingthey have shadow rankings behind the scenes. They don’t tell them to the employees, and then employees are like, Wait, why did I get a smaller bonus than this other person? Regardless of format, one of the most frequent critiques of performance reviews is that they are vulnerable to bias. Even if reviews are standardized across a company, your performance rating can be impacted by a number of variables and often hinges on how your manager or team approaches reviews. A narrative component can help address this issuebut that still depends on how managers are trained and whether they understand the value of proffering real feedback. To ensure managers actually commit to the review process, Zitek says, its important for employers to emphasize the purpose of providing thoughtful feedback. People are more willing to do things if they know why they’re doing it, she says. So it could just be making an effort to convince the managers [that] this isn’t just another box to check. Its also crucial that managers are trained on how to give constructive performance feedback, she addssomething that many employers fail to do effectivelyand that they offer it at a more regular cadence so employees are not surprised when their review rolls around. Feedback can be uncomfortable to give sometimes, Zitek says. But it’s more uncomfortable later if they don’t get promoted and don’t understand whyand they could have been performing better the entire time if they were given that feedback.
Category:
E-Commerce
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