Quartz reports:

Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled plans to tackle the rise in Wall Street homeownership as part of a slate of economic proposals announced Friday.

The Democratic presidential nominee is targeting investors that buy up and mark up homes in bulk, a growing trend that’s making the housing and rental market more expensive for Americans, the Harris campaign said.

Within her first 100 days in office, Harris said she would call on Congress to pass the “Stop Predatory Investing Act,” a bill introduced in July 2023 by Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown that removes tax benefits for large investors that acquire swaths of single-family rental homes.

“Some corporate landlords buy dozens, if not hundreds of houses and apartments, then they turn around and rent them out at extremely high prices,” Harris said at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina Friday. “And it can make it impossible then for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home.”

Investors bought one-quarter of single-family homes sold by the end of 2022. While high interest rates and low supply have helped to slow some of this activity, Wall Street has remained in the space. That’s especially true when it comes to lower-cost housing: Real estate investors bought 26% of the most affordable homes sold in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to Redfin (RDFN) data.

If these trends continue, MetLife Investment Management (MET) estimates that institutional investors could control 40% of U.S. single-family rental homes by 2030. [Continue reading…]