President Trump has filled the first half of his second term instituting legacy-establishing policies and agendas, but a new measure restricting real estate investors may be his biggest legacy yet, according to Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.On Thursday, the Treasury Department proposed a rule implementing elements of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Starting January 7, 2027, investors controlling at least 350 single-family homes generally can’t buy more unless an exception applies.
Pulte: ‘Not allowing corporations to dominate our subdivisions’
“This is going to be one of President Trump’s biggest legacies in terms of making sure that the American people are reflected in their own communities. And I think you’re going to see it happen here in the next 6, 12, 18 months,” Pulte predicted in an interview on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show.
Pulte, who also chairs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, continued, “But you’re also going to see it for, you know, 5, 10, 15 years from now. He’s forever changed the makeup of the nature of American neighborhoods by not allowing corporations to dominate our subdivisions.”
The exceptions to the new rule include newly built homes bought within 18 months of completion and renovate-to-rent deals where investors fix code violations. Violations could cost from $1 million to as much as three times the home’s purchase price. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has touted the rule as a booster to homeownership for working families.
U.S. shortfall is as high as 10 million single-family homes
America’s housing crunch comes down to too few homes and costs that have outpaced incomes. How big the gap is depends on who’s counting: the White House’s Economic Report of the President estimates a shortage of 10 million single-family homes, while in 2024 Freddie Mac put it at 3.7 million units and Realtor.com more recently pegged it at just over 4 million. Construction hasn’t caught up: Housing starts peaked near 2.5 million in 1972, about 1 million above early-2026 levels.
Renters feel it most. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found a record 22.7 million renter households, about 49%, were cost-burdened in 2024, including 12.1 million paying half or more of their income for housing.
Buyers face their own wall: The income needed to qualify for a median-priced home rose from $79,600 in 2021 to $126,700 in 2024, and the typical first-time buyer’s age hit 40, a record in the National Association of Realtors’ tracking. Rising property taxes, insurance, prices, and mortgage rates keep squeezing owners and would-be buyers alike.
U.S. housing market in 1950s a very different picture
The postwar era built the modern American dream. Homeownership jumped to 55% in 1950 and 61.9% by 1960, powered by Federal Housing Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs mortgages, and Levitt & Sons borrowed auto assembly-line methods to build up to 30 houses a day. By 1960, a quarter of the nation’s housing stock hadn’t existed a decade earlier.
That boom excluded many: The FHA and VA kept redlining, denying mortgages to black and other minority buyers, and no federal law banned housing discrimination until the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Mortgage rates hit the mid-teens in the early 1980s, and recessions plus high rates pushed homeownership down to 63.8% in 1986. Rates then fell steadily, and ownership peaked at 69% in 2004. Prices peaked in early 2005, and rising foreclosures set off a crisis that rippled through Wall Street, banking, and homebuilding. Homebuilding fell dramatically after 2008, a slowdown many link to today’s shortage.
Amanda Head is White House Correspondent for Just the News. You can follow her here.
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