Wall Street Is Your Landlord Now

After the 2008 financial crisis — a crisis caused by Wall Street — institutional investors swooped in and bought hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes at rock-bottom prices. Homes that families lost. Homes in Black and brown neighborhoods. Homes in working-class communities.

Now those same firms are your landlord.

The Numbers

• Institutional investors own an estimated 575,000+ single-family rental homes in the US
• In some Sun Belt metros, corporate buyers account for 25-30% of home purchases
• Invitation Homes (backed by Blackstone) owns over 80,000 homes
• American Homes 4 Rent owns over 59,000 homes
• Rents have increased 30-40% in many markets since 2019

How It Works

These companies use algorithms to identify undervalued properties, outbid regular families with all-cash offers, do minimal maintenance, raise rents aggressively, and hit tenants with junk fees. They've turned single-family homes into an asset class — a financial product that exists to generate returns for investors, not shelter for families.

The Ripple Effect

When corporations buy up homes, everyone suffers:

• First-time homebuyers get priced out and outbid
• Renters face constant rent increases with no path to ownership
• Neighborhoods deteriorate because corporate landlords do minimal upkeep
• Local wealth drains out of communities and flows to Wall Street
• Property taxes rise for everyone as prices are driven up

A Generation Locked Out

For millions of young Americans, homeownership — once the most common path to building wealth — is now out of reach. Not because they don't work hard enough, but because they're competing against billion-dollar corporations for the same houses.

The same financial industry that crashed the economy and got bailed out by taxpayers is now profiting by making housing unaffordable for the people whose taxes paid for that bailout.