Wall Street remains easy target, but tackling housing affordability begins in Georgia
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GUEST OPINION
By Chris Denson
On May 6, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff announced his intention to investigate “large, out-of-state companies buying up Georgia homes and driving up home prices.”
This has become a common target when discussing housing affordability – and not just in the halls of Congress or under the Gold Dome. Rarely does my organization, the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, participate in an event on housing around the state without at least one attendee citing their personal experience and asking to rein them in.
These out-of-state companies, typically classified as “institutional investors,” but just as commonly referred to as “Wall Street,” “hedge fund investors” or “big banks” among the public at large, have drawn the ire of policymakers and the public primarily by purchasing existing single-family homes and then renting them out. Some of these companies also build homes and develop entire subdivisions with the sole intention of renting, another contentious concept known as Build-to-Rent, or BTR.
In his press release, Sen. Ossoff cited reports by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution and U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) about the increasing concentration of metro Atlanta single-family homes owned by these companies. He requested additional information from four corporations in particular — Invitation Homes, Main Street Renewal, Tricon Residential and Progress Residential — regarding “their home purchases in Georgia, how many single-family homes they own, fees being charged to renters and more.”
Financial institutions have a long history as a favorite target of populism, and in an era of escalating home prices and faceless landlords, they are unsurprisingly in the crosshairs. After all, it was the “man down at the bank” that took the love interest – and not the Corvette – George Jones once sang about.
This is not a blanket defense of “out-of-state companies” acquiring single-family homes with the purpose of renting them; I can offer no counterpoint or consolation to the frustration of being outbid by an all-cash offer from a multibillion-dollar corporation.
Rather, it is an appeal that when this issue is raised and discussed, the data are framed appropriately. Housing policy is a complex issue, with a multitude of cost factors currently driving (in)affordability. Land, lumber (or building materials), labor, laws (regulations) and lending (interest rates) are the primary factors that have been identified in recent years by lawmakers.
Ultimately, these “five L’s” represent the elements which have led to the primary reason for Georgia’s housing crunch – a lack of supply. While it may seem counterintuitive to those who see subdivisions and apartment complexes “popping up everywhere,” Georgia continues to struggle with how to provide adequate housing after continuously adding a million new residents per decade since 1980.
When the sustained demand for housing outpaces supply, it should come as no surprise when homes are treated like a financial commodity ripe for arbitrage.
In response to Sen. Ossoff’s investigation, National Rental Home Council CEO David Howard told the AJC that “a chronic lack of housing — not companies providing single-family homes for rent — is the problem.” He went on to note that “zoning rules and regulations had slowed construction, pushing prices higher.”
Sen. Ossoff was unmoved by this argument. In his reply, he said that “institutional investors had created demand for single-family homes by converting homes to rentals, driving up prices and diminishing supply. When you have an increase in demand simultaneous with a decrease in supply, you have an increase in prices. I think that’s pretty straightforward.’”
I tend to agree with Mr. Howard’s view of the landscape after examining the cost of government regulations to build single-family and multifamily housing, and the ways local governments restrict home production and artificially inflate costs. Conversely, Build-To-Rent at least represents new housing supply, and might be the only affordable option for many families given current interest rates.
State legislators responded to their constituents on this issue earlier this year by passing a bill that would require these out-of-state landlords to have someone who resides in the state available to respond to maintenance problems and other issues that may arise for tenants.
Another bill, which would have limited these companies to owning an interest in no more than 2,000 single-family homes or 10 multifamily residences (defined as four or more units), was sent back to the House Judiciary Committee and remains alive heading into the 2026 legislative session.
Generally, fear of concentrated capital is a valid concern. But as one researcher with the Atlanta Regional Commission who studied this issue acknowledged to the AJC, these investor-owned homes represent a “relatively small percentage of total housing stock,” but “every house you take off the market through corporate investments is one less house that somebody could buy to become a homeowner and then begin that journey to generational wealth.”
Undoubtedly, that sentiment is true. But in order to truly address the cause and not a symptom when it comes to these out-of-state companies, Georgia communities will have to commit to building hundreds of thousands of homes statewide – which requires truly looking inward at the policies that have stifled housing to meet demand.
Chris Denson is the Director of Policy and Research at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and possesses over a decade of experience in public policy in Georgia and Washington, D.C.
