INTERESTED PARTIES MEMO
RE: Trump Executive Order on Institutional Investors & Single-Family Homes
FROM: Tax the Greedy Billionaires, Private Equity Stakeholder Project, & Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund
DATE: January 23, 2026
Even the Trump administration now acknowledges that billionaire control of housing markets is driving up costs for working families. The president’s Executive Order represents a rare moment of bipartisan recognition that extreme concentrations of wealth are fueling America’s affordability crisis and confirms what families across the country already know: The housing market is rigged against them by the ultra-rich.
Under the policies of this administration, billionaire wealth grew 22% in 2025, from $6.7 trillion to $8.2 trillion and the number of billionaires increased from 814 to 935. As a result, it’s not surprising that this Order creates a smokescreen of action to reduce housing costs while sidestepping the real drivers of the housing crisis.
By narrowly targeting a subset of institutional purchases of single-family homes, the Order ignores the complex web of tactics billionaires and large investors use to manipulate housing markets: price-fixing algorithms, monopolistic landlord practices, speculative land banking, short-term rental conversions, predatory financing schemes, and luxury development that displaces affordable housing. While corporate landlords raise rents, heap on junk fees, and neglect maintenance, tenants are increasingly struggling to make ends meet, making tough choices between rent, medicine, bills and groceries. Real families need real solutions—not political theater.
Any genuine effort to address billionaire control in housing markets must be grounded in tax policies that chip away at the wealth and economic power of the ultra-wealthy, which enable them to distort the housing market to enrich themselves and increase housing costs for everyone else. Anything less is simply an attempt to score political points off a crisis that is destroying the American Dream for millions of families.
