Corporate landlords aren't the real villain

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2026

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

So you want to buy a house. You MIGHT notice that the owner isn’t a neighbor in your town, but a large corporation. A recent housing bill that passed the Senate wants to change that. This bill would restrict large institutional investors from owning too many single family homes. The hope is to improve affordability. But what’s the real connection between housing affordability and corporate landlords? We look at the evidence.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What tour? The World Tour. We're heading to Canada for the Planet Money Book launch, April 27th in Toronto.
0:09.3	It's going to be me, Darian, along with Weyland Wong, plus Planet Money book lead author Alex Mayassi.
0:14.9	Also have special guest AI expert, RV Goldfarb. So, our dear neighbours to the north, you can get your tickets at
0:22.8	Planet Moneybook.com. See you there.
0:29.3	NPR.
0:46.0	A few years ago, Amanda Cantrell was looking for a new house to live with her boyfriend and a friend.
0:50.0	She wanted to rent a home with a large garage that would take pets.
0:52.0	I have a rescue dog. His name is Digby.
0:55.6	Amanda was searching in one suburb in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
1:00.8	And she noticed a lot of the houses were owned or managed by big corporations.
1:07.3	It seems that those companies own all of those houses in that suburb, but I didn't see one private landlord when I was looking.
1:11.5	This made Amanda a little concerned for when she becomes a buyer.
1:17.0	We would like to buy a home in the future, and the fact that corporate investors can take all of them feels unfair. This feeling of unfairness crosses the political spectrum. The 21st century
1:23.6	Road to Housing Act is a bill aimed at improving housing affordability. It was passed in a
1:29.0	bipartisan sweep in the Senate and was sent to the House. This bill restricts large institutional
1:34.7	investors from owning too many single-family houses. There are pockets in the country where
1:39.9	institutional investors account for a higher share of homeowners. But across the country, it's
1:45.1	tiny, less than 1%. So we wanted to know, could banning institutional home investors
1:51.6	improve housing affordability? This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darien Woods.
1:56.4	And I'm Waylon Wong. Today on the show, corporate landlords and house prices, we comb through the evidence on big investors owning homes and ask whether there's a case for banning them.
2:09.3	If the 21st century Road to Housing Act were to pass as is, it would throttle the entire industry of large corporate landlords in suburbia.
2:18.7	Basically, they wouldn't be able to buy any more single-family homes.
	...

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