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With
hospital
consolidation
blamed
for
increasing
costs
and
decreasing
quality—while
boosting
profits
for
private
equity
investors—more
than
a
dozen
states
have
moved
to
restrict
the
industry’s
activity
in
the
healthcare
space.
And,
increasingly,
Democrats
and
Republicans,
from
coast
to
coast,
are
coming
together
to
denounce
p.e.
ownership
of
single-family
homes.
Over
the
last
few
years,
home
affordability
“has
just
totally
collapsed,”
according
to
Redfin
senior
economist
Chen
Zhao.
Buying
the
typical
American
home
now
requires
the
typical
American
to
make
about
$30,000
more
per
year
than
she
actually
does.
Obviously,
a
lot
goes
into
why,
particularly
higher
interest
rates
and
restrictive
local
zoning
laws.
But
those
are
hard
or
impossible
to
deal
with.
On
the
other
hand,
those
tens
of
thousands
of
homes
private-equity
firms
have
bought
up
to
place
on
the
rental
market
may
also
be
driving
up
prices,
while
simultaneously
restricting
supply.
And
they
present
an
appealing
legislative
target.
Lawmakers
on
both
sides
of
the
aisle,
in
states
as
blue
as
New
York
and
California
to
those
as
ruby-red
as
Nebraska
and
Ohio,
have
introduced
legislation
to
restrict
Wall
Street
firms
from
buying
out
the
American
Dream.
Texas
Gov.
Greg
Abbott,
as
fiercely
partisan
a
right-winger
as
any,
took
the
rare
step
of
backing
a
Democratic
effort
to
keep
p.e.
firms
and
hedge
funds
out
of
Lone
Star
State
neighborhoods.
The
self-proclaimed
champion
of
“free
markets”
explains,
with
less-than-admirable
intellectual
consistency,
“corporate
large-scale
buying
of
residential
homes
seems
to
be
distorting
the
market.”
For
their
part,
the
institutional
investors
and
the
rental
industry
generally
aren’t
much
better
at
noticing
their
own
logical
difficulties:
They
argue
that
they
give
people
the
opportunity
to
rent
in
neighborhoods
they
couldn’t
afford
to
buy
in,
without
completing
the
circular
reasoning
that
their
paying
top
dollar
for
homes
in
those
neighborhoods
might
be
the
reason
why.
Others
argue
that
the
buying
spree
is
now
essentially
over,
so
no
need
to
regulate,
although
no
one
seems
to
have
told
the
Blackstone
Group,
the
largest
property
buyer
in
the
U.S.
this
year,
including
a
$3.5
billion
deal
for
single-family
rental
operation
Tricorn
Residential.
That
later
argument
doesn’t
do
much
to
undermine
some
of
the
proposals,
which
would
force
those
companies
to
sell
the
overwhelming
majority
of
their
stock.
The
Democratic-backed
End
Hedge
Fund
Control
of
Americans
Homes
Act
in
Congress
would
cap
single-family
holdings
at
50;
Minnesota’s
bill
would
limit
it
to
20.
Another
approach
is
the
brainchild
of
a
Cincinnati-area
Republican,
even
if
it
doesn’t
sound
like
one:
imposing
punishing
taxes
on
such
companies.
Claiming
to
fear
rental
companies
building
a
monopoly
on
homes
in
certain
neighborhoods,
Ohio
State
Sen.
Louis
Blessing
III
claims
his
is
“an
antitrust
in
spirit
bill.”
In
spite
of
broad
bipartisan
support
for
such
measures
among
the
electorate,
none
of
the
bills
has
made
much
headway.
But
if
owning
a
home
remains
out
of
reach
for
more
and
more
Americans,
the
pressure
in
the
housing
market
may
well
fall
on
big
investors.
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