Corporate Home Ownership needs to be reined in

More than a half-dozen states and Congress are exam­in­ing bills relat­ed to the cor­po­rate own­er­ship of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes.

The pur­chase of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes by large pri­vate enti­ties has accel­er­at­ed in recent years, remov­ing such homes from the open mar­ket for indi­vid­ual buy­ers. Many of these homes are sub­se­quent­ly rent­ed rather than resold to indi­vid­u­als or fam­i­lies. If they are reha­bil­i­tat­ed for sin­gle-fam­i­ly use, they are often priced at a lev­el that begins to unrav­el the community.

Some stud­ies sug­gest that large com­pa­nies own near­ly 600,000 homes in the U.S. In Washington state, the share of homes bought by investors increased by near­ly 50% between 2018 and 2021.

In Metro Atlanta, large investors, those hold­ing more than 1,000 homes each, own more than 70,000 homes.

One rea­son large investors can pro­cure these homes is that they have the reserves to pay cash, which edges out home buy­ers who must use mortgages.

A bill, HB 237, was intro­duced in the Kentucky leg­is­la­ture in 2025, seek­ing to gain some con­trol over investor-owned sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes. The bill was sent to the House Judiciary Committee. It remains to be seen if it will be pre­sent­ed to the full leg­is­la­ture in the 2026 session.

HB 237 has a straight­for­ward title: AN ACT relat­ing to the pur­chase of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes. The bill uses the term “per­son” as a pri­ma­ry descrip­tor. It defines “per­son” as: “…a fidu­cia­ry, firm, asso­ci­a­tion, part­ner­ship, lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny, cor­po­ra­tion, or oth­er busi­ness enti­ty or group act­ing as a unit [exclud­ing a gov­ern­men­tal enti­ty].

The bill also defines “Qualifying coun­ty” as one with a “pop­u­la­tion greater than 30,000 per the lat­est decen­ni­al cen­sus”. Interestingly, only 35 of the 120 Kentucky coun­ties have pop­u­la­tions greater than 30,000. Why would so many coun­ties be exempt from this legislation?

There are two oth­er require­ments in the bill that seem unnec­es­sary, arbi­trary, or even questionable.

Section 2(1) restricts a “per­son” from pur­chas­ing a home in a qual­i­fy­ing coun­ty if the per­son owns 50 or more sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes used pri­mar­i­ly for rental purposes.

Section 2(2)(a) says that the pre­ced­ing sec­tion shall not apply “when a sin­gle-fam­i­ly home has been adver­tised for sale for nine­ty (90) days or more, unless the pur­chas­er qual­i­fies as a small busi­ness, in which case this sec­tion shall not apply when a sin­gle-fam­i­ly home has been adver­tised for sale for thir­ty (30) days or more..”

While this leg­is­la­tion may be a step for­ward in ensur­ing a rea­son­able sup­ply of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes is con­sis­tent­ly avail­able, it also appears some­what lib­er­al in allow­ing com­pa­nies to acquire a larg­er num­ber of prop­er­ties than are real­is­ti­cal­ly necessary.

And why shouldn’t a piece of Kentucky leg­is­la­tion apply equal­ly to every coun­ty instead of only a fourth of the state? Is the demand for sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes sta­tis­ti­cal­ly less, per capi­ta, in small­er coun­ties than in the larg­er ones?

With home prices con­stant­ly ris­ing, it only makes sense to make the most avail­able to the largest seg­ment of the population.