Authored by Matt Stoller via BIG,
Based on a vote last week, it seems very likely Congress will ban corporate ownership of most existing single family homes. "People live in homes," said Trump in January. "Not corporations." While Trump has sometimes talked a big game on constraining Wall Street, he generally hasn't followed through. In this case, though, he did. And somehow, a very corporate-friendly legislature came through as well.
It's almost impossible to believe, but here's the relevant provision in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, by a 396-13 margin.
And here's the White House's statement supporting the bill.
As called for during the State of the Union, this legislation includes the President's signature priority: banning large institutional investor purchases of single-family homes. Section 1001 delivers a framework that addresses Wall Street's dominance in the single family housing market and protects Main Street homebuyers.
And the House followed the Senate, which in March passed an even more stringent ban, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren. There are some important caveats here, which I'll go into. But it's still a remarkable accomplishment, and a shockingly weird Warren-Trump alliance, that no one would have predicted a year ago.
So what happened?
I wrote up the full account two months ago, when the Senate acted. The short story is that voters were mad about high housing costs in 2024, and voted against the Democrats as a result. In January, Trump realized voters were now mad at him for high housing costs. And so he wanted to do something. But what could he do? He was trying to impose his will on the Federal Reserve, which could lower rates for homeowners. But that wasn't working out because he couldn't get the Supreme Court or the Senate to go along.
And beyond that, mortgage rates aren't the only driver of costs. So what hiking housing prices? There is a split in both parties over that question. One theory comes from a group of Wall Street-friendly liberals and libertarians, known as the "Abundance movement," who argue the problem is that we're not friendly enough to capital, and the solution is to remove zoning limitations. Yet despite the removal of many such limitations in states like California, there hasn't been a spurt of homebuilding.
A different theory comes from anti-monopolists, who believe that the consolidation of financing power and homebuilding capacity led to supply restrictions. That group argued that Wall Street cash was pouring into single family housing as an asset class, driving up prices for ordinary people. And those buyers, as corporate landlords, didn't serve renters particularly well. There is substantial evidence behind this theory.
Institutional ownership is regionally concentrated, with investors buying up properties in particular cities. In Atlanta, for instance, large institutional investors have dominant shares of the market…
In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission under Lina Khan found that Invitation Homes, a spinoff of Blackstone, had engaged in rampant misbehavior. The CEO told one of his subordinates to “juice this hog” and they did so by deceiving renters, unfairly evicting people, charging junk fees, and so forth…
Congressional documents showed that “renters in institutionally-owned SFR homes often experience higher rent increases, inflated fees, and diminishing quality of housing over time.” And Federal Reserve economists wrote a paper observing that such investors “raise rents at 60 percent higher rates than the average increase when first acquiring the property,” and that rents overall go up.
Big builders are now working with Wall Street to construct single family homes that never go on the market, but instead are rented out from the beginning. This "Build to Rent" sector took off, doubling in market share from 2021-2024. And it is now where institutional capital is focused. Build to Rent allows Wall Street to augment an asset class, and it enables control of housing supply to keep prices up.
Trump usually has an intuitive understanding of where voters are, even if he often chooses other priorities. And on housing, he got that the public is quite populist. Here’s the New York Times’s latest poll, showing that Democrats by a more than two to one margin blame corporate monopolies over supply restrictions for the price of homes and energy. It’s likely not that different among independents or the GOP.
Trump issued an executive order and a Truth Social post on the need to ban corporate ownership of housing. He even criticized the big homebuilders, saying they were “sitting on 2 Million empty lots, a RECORD.” And he called them similar to the oil cartel OPEC. Here’s what Trump said in his order, and honestly, it would be hard for me to write it any better.
A growing share of single-family homes, often concentrated in certain communities, have been purchased by large Wall Street investors, crowding out families seeking to buy homes. Hardworking young families cannot effectively compete for starter homes with Wall Street firms and their vast resources. Neighborhoods and communities once controlled by middle-class American families are now run by faraway corporate interests. People live in homes, not corporations. My Administration will take decisive action to stop Wall Street from treating America's neighborhoods like a trading floor and empower American families to own their homes.
This policy decision by Trump synced up with a bill that Republican Senator Tim Scott and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren had prepared in the Banking Committee to lower housing costs back in July of last year. Their goal was to improve supply, by doing things like encouraging more manufactured housing, speeding up zoning, and providing more public money for homebuilding and cities.
When Trump chimed in with his views, Scott and Warren then included a provision to ban large institutional investors from owning single family homes, setting a limit of 350 homes per investor. They also imposed significant limits on the "Build to Rent" sector. The Scott/Warren bill passed 89-10, an overwhelming majority.
The fly in the ointment was the House of Representatives, notably the Republican Chair of the Financial Services Committee, French Hill. Private equity was pouring in money to help Hill. His goal was to force the Senate to sit down and negotiate something different, removing the institutional ownership caps.
The big question was whether the White House would be able and willing to jam Hill, and force the House to accept the Senate package. It was possible. Trump himself was not particularly focused on housing, as the Iran War, AI, the ballroom, the Federal Reserve and his lawsuit with the IRS were taking up his attention. But if the House Democrats were on board, then the White House could likely swing enough Republican votes to push the Senate bill through.
And that seemed to be doable, even likely. Private equity, especially buying housing, is politically toxic. And the House Democratic lead on the Financial Services Committee is an 87-year old Congresswoman named Maxine Waters, who has traditionally been an assertive liberal icon. So you'd think she'd be supportive, and could cap her long political career with a powerful bill making sure that the American home would be owned by American families.
But Waters, like so many of her generation, just doesn't want to give up power. She's controversial, she's not a good fundraiser, and Democrats are starting to attack the very old leaders who run committees. So instead of shepherding this bill through, she decided to go full pro-industry, and join Hill in opposing the provisions in the bill that would ban corporate ownership. The House majority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, backed her decision, as did much of the "Abundance" world of advocates. The House draft removed the homeownership provisions entirely.
Trump, Warren, and Scott continued to push, and finally they cut a deal with the House. The ban would stay for existing housing stock, but it would not apply if private equity built new housing, aka the "Build to Rent" sector. Corporations that own and rent single family homes would not be forced to sell them, and they can build new ones. But the existing stock of owner-occupied single family homes, roughly 70 million of them, effectively cannot be bought by big business.
There are still some aspects of the bill being negotiated, but in terms of the housing provisions, something akin to what passed the House is likely to be signed into law later this summer. And the legislation, imperfect as it is, will be the most significant housing legislation in decades, and will prevent the acquisition of the existing U.S. housing stock by Wall Street. It will be left to future lawmakers to find ways of letting renters buy out their Build to Rent homes, or further push back institutional capital from owning other parts of the American home. And single family housing isn't enough of a target, one in eight apartments is now owned by private equity.
Still, with this political setup, in this moment, it's a remarkable accomplishment. In some ways, this kind of legislation may have a parallel to Jimmy Carter's deregulatory zeal. Carter wanted to undo FDR's legacy, and fought hard, with a Democratic Congress, to get rid of public utility rules on airlines, banks, telecommunications providers, trucks, and railroads. Torn between the Democratic Party's allegiance to labor and his desire to break that alliance, he was deeply unpopular. But his deregulatory policies stuck. His successor, Ronald Reagan, built on Carter's approach, and it is Reagan, not Carter, who is known as the President that undid the New Deal.
Trump, like Carter, is a fish out of water. Trump's party is not populist, and mostly he has doubled down on support for Wall Street and war. But there are some indications, like this housing bill, that show it's the end for an entire way of doing business. Since Reagan, American policymakers have been aggressive in ensuring that capital can do whatever it seeks in getting the highest return, and the government has sought to turn whatever it can - our houses, our attention, our pain, sports betting - into an asset class for finance. Trump won't end that, just as Carter didn't end the New Deal. But his successor might.
Tyler Durden Tue, 05/26/2026 - 13:40With Treasury yields sliding 4 days in a row, today's 2Y auction was not seen as especially concerning (certainly not as much as a week ago, when the 10Y was knocking on 4.70%'s door, vs 4.50% where it trades today). Still, while the auction did have it strong sides, it was hardly stellar.
Starting at the top, the $69BN sale of 2Y paper priced at a high yield of 4.071%, up 26bps from 3.812% a month ago, and the highest since Feb 2025. The auction also priced on the screws with the When Issued 4.071%, following three straight tailing auctions, so a modest improvement there.
The bid to cover was 2.640, which was down modestly from 2.653 a month ago, but above the 2.62 six-auction average.
The internals were in line: Indirects (aka foreign buyers) took down 57.6%, up from 56.48% a month ago but below the 57.9% recent average; and with Directs almost flat at 30.1% (down from 31.65% in April, and above the 29.3% recent average), Dealers were left holding 12.30%, up from 11.87% a month ago and just below the 6-auction average of 12.84%.
Overall, this was a forgettable auction with mediocre stats and internals. Then again, with the market trading treasuries and oil as one asset class today (while stocks do their own thing again), and sending sharply much lower on hopes that this time the Iran deal is definitely imminent (unlike all the previous times), it's not like anyone was paying attention to bond market internals today... or frankly anything else for that matter.
Tyler Durden Tue, 05/26/2026 - 13:27
By Michael Every of Rabobank
Strait TalkDespite many false dawns, markets remain upbeat on prospects for peace between the United States and Iran. Secretary of State Rubio indicated that the US side had thought it would have something to announce on Sunday night, or “maybe today” given that the Sunday deadline has now passed, and it is actually Tuesday. Striking a more cautionary tone, Iranian President Pezeshkian said of prospects that a deal would be made within the day that “nobody could make such a claim”, while President Trump had earlier said that he had urged his representatives not to rush negotiations.
US markets were closed yesterday, but Asian and European equities finished broadly higher with notable gains seen in Japan’s Nikkei (+2.87%), Taiwan’s TAIEX (+3.26%) and the Euro Stoxx 50 (+1.95%). The July Brent crude future tumbled 7.15% to close at $96.14/bbl while WTI traded below $90/bbl before closing the day at $90.88. Bonds were bid across the curve with moves at the short end being especially pronounced.
Al Arabiya reports that it has obtained a copy of the draft memorandum of understanding that reportedly has the support of both sides. Provision of the MOU are said to include:
This looks very like an oil-for-oil agreement, but notably excludes any mention of Iran’s missile program or regional proxies, and kicks the contentious nuclear issue into the long grass to be negotiated over the next two months. Considering that Iran’s nuclear program was core to the rationale for the war in the first place, market participants might direct some thought toward what could happen if agreement cannot be reached on that elusive point.
President Trump said this morning that “The Enriched Uranium will either be immediately turned over to the United States to be brought home and destroyed or, preferably, in conjunction and coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, destroyed in place or, at another acceptable location...” An Iranian response to this claim is not yet forthcoming.
Muddying the waters further, news broke this morning that US forces had carried out strikes against two IRGC ships. A CENTCOM spokesman said that the strikes were defensive, and in response to the ships attempting to lay mines in the Strait – which would certainly run counter to the spirit of the provision for Iran to remove mines that has supposedly been agreed. Iran retaliated by reportedly targeting US planes with surface-to-air missiles, eliciting strikes from the US on missile launchers near Bandar Abbas. Despite the tit-for-tat, US sources say that the ceasefire remains in effect.
Similarly, MOU provisions for ending regional war in Lebanon face strains as Israeli PM Netanyahu says that his armed forces will intensify strikes against Hezbollah to “deal them a crushing blow.” There is also likely to be daylight between the US and Israeli positions on Iran’s nuclear program, as the US appears to be prioritising the re-opening of Hormuz through an oil-for-oil arrangement while Israel views Iranian nuclear enrichment as an existential issue. Netanyahu has previously indicated that Israel reserves freedom to act directly against the Iranian nuclear program and has faced criticism from Opposition Leader Yair Lapid for failing to influence the Americans on this point.
For Trump’s part, peace with Iran is very much being tied to progress on the Abraham Accords that seek to normalize relations between Israel and US-aligned Arab states in the Gulf and elsewhere. Progressing the Abraham Accords would allow the US to make a geopolitical silk purse from the sow’s ear of a closed Strait of Hormuz. Already the importance of this has been demonstrated through the UAE’s (a current signatory) decision to leave OPEC and OPEC+ after having been granted US dollar swaplines and Israeli military aid.
Trump took to Truth Social to say that he is “mandatorily requesting” that all countries in the region sign the Accords, calling out Saudi Arabia and Qatar specifically and saying that failure to do so would show “bad intention” and should preclude those countries from benefiting from a peace deal. Clearly things are moving very fast but, as we have been flagging for some time now, there is potential for a world on the other side of this crisis where oil flows West, priced in dollars, with its security underwritten by the US navy, and Hormuz gradually becomes less important as a maritime chokepoint.
While issues in the Gulf continue to steal headlines, there are also major developments in the Ukraine War. Russia has reportedly warned Washington to evacuate embassy staff in Kiev as it prepares to launch “systematic strikes” against the Ukrainian capital. This follows confirmation from Russia on Sunday that it had used a nuclear-capable hypersonic ballistic missile against Ukrainian targets for the third time in the war.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said that the strikes will be a response to a Ukrainian drone attack against a student dormitory building in Starobilsk that killed at least 18 people and injured dozens of others. The BBC reports comments from honorary chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, Sergey Karaganov, who reportedly said “we need to start punishing Europe for things like this, including with strikes. Symbolic to start with. Then, perhaps, less symbolic.”
Clearly, hoped-for progress in the Strait notwithstanding, geopolitical risk is here to stay and it isn’t necessarily all ‘in the price’.
Tyler Durden Tue, 05/26/2026 - 13:00Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
The Ebola outbreak in Africa could become the deadliest in history because it is spreading faster than responders can deal with it, an aid group said on May 26.
Officials failed to initially detect the outbreak due to a lack of testing sufficient to identify the Bundibugyo virus, a rarer type of virus that causes Ebola. The outbreak is centered in the Ituri province in the northeast of Congo, also known as the DRC, where fighting regularly displaces people from their homes and hospitals.
“The initial failure to detect this outbreak has allowed it to spread to several areas of Ituri province in northeast DRC, where the first cases were identified, as well as to North Kivu (just to the south of Ituri) and South Kivu provinces, and now Uganda,” the International Rescue Committee, one of the aid groups on the ground, said in a report published on Tuesday.
With cases reported in key population centers such as Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and Kampala in Uganda, there is a significant risk of onward spread of the disease, the group assessed.
“The warning signs are flashing red,” Bob Kitchen, vice president of emergencies for the group, said in a statement.
“Eastern DRC is confronting this outbreak more fragile and less prepared than during the 2018–2020 outbreak that killed more than 2,000 people—and with fewer resources to fight it. Increased conflict and cuts to global aid funding have dismantled defenses at exactly the wrong moment.”
The outbreak has risen to 101 confirmed cases, about 220 suspected deaths, and more than 900 suspected cases, about one month after the outbreak was first detected. Other countries, such as Rwanda and the United States, have restricted travel from people who have been in Congo or intensified border checks.
“The delay in detecting the outbreak means that we are now playing catch-up with a very fast-moving epidemic,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director-general, told a meeting of African ministers on Monday.
“We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment, the epidemic is outpacing us.”
There are no vaccines or treatments for the Bundibugyo virus. Containment efforts include widespread testing, isolating patients, and monitoring people exposed to known or suspected cases.
Ghebreyesus said that working with the governments of Congo and Uganda and other partners would be key to stopping the outbreak. Governments and other entities on Monday pledged about $500 million to ramp up efforts to respond to and prevent further spread of the outbreak, Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a post on X.
Technicians install beds and other equipment inside the isolation area for suspected cases at CBCA Virunga Hospital during rehabilitation work aimed at preparing the facility to receive potential Ebola cases in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, on May 22, 2026. Jospin Mwisha/AFP via Getty Images
The International Rescue Committee, which is based in New York, recommended several steps, including relaxing restrictions on the importation of personal protective equipment such as masks, and quickly donating funds to central Africa to support health workers and others.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, another aid group with personnel in Congo, has called for increased funding to expand surveillance and deploy more teams to help locals safely bury Ebola victims.
Patrick Muyaya, a Congolese government spokesman, said in a May 25 post on X that the epidemic was “well contained” in the Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu provinces.
“Every day, response teams are being strengthened and surveillance is being intensified,” he wrote, adding later that “we have the experience and expertise to contain this outbreak.”
Tyler Durden Tue, 05/26/2026 - 12:40