Dive Brief:
- Major rental housing companies have until Wednesday, April 8, to submit detailed information about their portfolios and rental practices to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who said she is probing the industry for predatory practices.
- Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, sent letters on March 27 to 14 of the biggest corporate landlords in the single-family, multifamily and manufactured housing sectors, requesting data on their rental housing portfolios and business practices, including landlord-tenant concerns.
- According to Warren, corporate landlords are buying up homes and “using aggressive and discriminatory tactics to push up profits at the expense of families.” However, the housing industry has said its single-family purchases only represent a tiny percentage of the market and its use of algorithmic rent pricing abides by legal guidelines.
Dive Insight:
Warren sent letters to American Homes 4 Rent, Blackstone, FirstKey Homes, Greystar, Homes of America, Horizon, Impact Communities, Invitation Homes, MAA, Progress Residential, RHP Properties, Starwood Capital, Tricon and Yes! Communities.
Her scrutiny comes in the wake of the Senate’s recent passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, shepherded by Warren and Committee Chair Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., which restricts large institutional investors from owning single-family homes. The housing industry broadly supports the sprawling legislation, but warns that the recently added Section 901 — which requires large investors sell single-family homes they built to rent within seven years to an individual buyer — would backfire and effectively eliminate the production of such BTR housing.
Build-to-rent single-family homes are underwritten, financed and constructed as multifamily housing, according to a March 10 open letter from housing industry groups, and it is not possible to sell individual units as single-family homes as the provision requires.The provision also brings up a slew of practical challenges, National Multifamily Housing Council President Sharon Wilson Géno told Multifamily Dive.
“Many of these properties are built on large parcels, you know, one, two, maybe three contiguous parcels. They’re not even platted for sale. So to go back in, it’s like putting a square peg in a round hole. The utilities are structured for rental,” Wilson Géno said.
Among the information Warren wants is for housing companies to distinguish single-family units that were built to rent, and whether those units are on platted lots, condominiumized, on a single planned unit development or some other land use structure. She is also requesting to know about communications the firms have had with members of the Trump administration.
In her announcement, Warren said that institutional investors in the single-family, multifamily and manufactured housing sectors often “shirk on tenant protections and maintenance costs” to boost profits.
“Major investors like Tricon Residential (now owned by Blackstone), Amherst, and Progress Residential have all been subject to major litigation for alleged fair housing violations, habitability deficiencies, and violations of basic property management standards,” Warren said.
Warren also cited “abusive practices by institutional investors in multifamily housing” that have driven up costs for renters — in particular, algorithmic rent pricing.
“Some of the largest owners of multifamily housing have been the subject of federal anti-competition lawsuits against their use of price-fixing algorithms that allow them to artificially inflate rent prices,” Warren said in the letter.
In November 2025, RealPage settled a lawsuit with the Justice Department that alleged the software provider enabled landlords to collude to raise rent prices beyond free market levels with its algorithmic pricing software. Earlier that month, nine states reached a $7 million settlement with the country’s largest landlord, Greystar, which used RealPage’s software.
The Federal Trade Commission is also cracking down on rental advertising. Currently, the FTC is mulling a rule to “address unfair or deceptive acts or practices relating to advertised rent and other fees and charges in the rental housing industry,” according to a March 12 request for public input.
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