I tried for years to buy a home. Wall Street always beat me — Trump made the right call
I tried to buy my first home for years. I never thought it would be so difficult. But I ran into barriers that I didn’t know existed — one of which President Donald Trump is trying to break down with an executive order he signed on January 20th.
I’m a 30-something man living in Marco Island, Florida, a community with a rich history and beautiful beaches. It’s been a popular place for decades, and naturally, that’s pushed prices higher. The typical home now costs in the high six figures, with a lot of homes selling for more than a million bucks. That makes homebuying difficult enough for young people, especially young families.
But what makes it even more difficult is that a huge number of homes aren’t even used as homes. About one out of every four homes on Marco Island is used as a short-term rental. While they were built for families and first-time homebuyers like me, they aren’t actually available for purchase. A lot of them are owned by regular people who’ve decided to rent out their old place. But others are owned by institutional investors — i.e., companies as far away as New York City.
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Let’s be clear: These companies have zero ties to the island. But they’ve been snapping up homes left and right anyway. That’s been especially true as homes have been rebuilt after the devastating hurricane that made landfall here in 2017. The data shows that my county has since had some of the highest activity from institutional investors in America. And that’s a problem for homebuyers like me.
These institutional investors are pricing folks out. It’s the iron law of supply and demand. There are a lot of would-be homebuyers like me in the area, but when big companies buy homes first, that leaves fewer properties for the rest of us. More people competing for fewer homes is guaranteed to spike prices. That helps explain why local home prices have consistently risen over the last decade. Again, not all of it, but not none of it, either.
What’s more, the institutional investors are buying homes in all-cash deals. It’s all but impossible for normal people to compete. Even if we agree to the same sale price as an investor, a homeowner is always going to choose the all-cash offer. I get it: It’s less risky, and you get the money right away. But what chance do everyday Americans have of beating Wall Street?
In 2021, I made offers on four or five places without success. I always offered a competitive bid at or near the asking price, but it didn’t help. By the middle of 2021, I gave up on a single-family home and settled for a small condo instead. But things have only gotten more difficult since then as more institutional investors have piled into the market. I know a lot of people — landscapers, waiters, fishing guides, you name it — who are struggling to find even a condo. That’s how bad things are.
It didn’t use to be like this. In 2011, there wasn’t an investor in America who owned more than 1,000 single-family homes. Less than 15 years later, the five largest investors alone own more than 300,000 homes. And it’s not just in places like Marco Island.
In Atlanta, about 25% of homes are owned by big investing companies. In Jacksonville, it’s 21%. As of 2022, there were 12 big cities where investors owned more than 10% of all homes. That number has surely grown since then, and with it, the homeownership affordability crisis has grown, too. In the second quarter of 2025, investors bought one out of every three new homes in America. That’s a gut punch.
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Is there hope for potential homebuyers like me? Hopefully. President Trump’s new executive order sets the stage for new federal rules protecting Main Street homebuyers from Wall Street. He said, “people live in homes, not corporations,” — and he’s right. That’s why the president is exploring a variety of unilateral actions and also working with Congress to enact this reform into law. I couldn’t be more supportive.
The critics — especially on Wall Street — say that cracking down on institutional investors won’t do much to lower the cost of homes. While that may be true in places where investors don’t own any homes, it doesn’t hold up in places like Marco Island. If more homes are available, prices will decrease — or at least not rise nearly as quickly. Besides, when it comes to lowering home prices, you have to start somewhere. Banning institutional investors from consuming massive numbers of single-family homes is a good choice. And hopefully it will just be the first reform of many.
One thing’s for sure: People like me need help. We’re not asking for a handout or a bailout or anything like that. We just want a chance to buy a home — and stop getting beat out by billionaires on Wall Street. I don’t understand why they’re blocking us to begin with. And I’m grateful to President Trump for fighting to get them out of the way.
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