As Trump Seeks to Curb Large Investors in US Housing, What’s the Situation in Canada?

The United States is experiencing a housing crunch, and one of President Donald Trump’s latest moves to address it involves banning large investment firms from purchasing single-family homes.

Canada has also been gripped by a housing affordability crisis in recent years, with soaring rents and home prices. But to what extent are institutional investors driving this trend, and how close is Canada to potentially restricting their ability to purchase homes?

Trump announced on Jan. 7 that he would be “immediately taking steps” to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes in the United States, saying purchasing a home is “increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans.”

Shortly after Trump’s announcement, the stock prices of investment firms involved in purchasing single‑family homes fell sharply: Blackstone’s stock dropped about 5.1 percent, Invitation Homes fell about 6.1 percent, and American Homes 4 Rent declined about 6.3 percent.

On Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order preventing government agencies from allowing large institutional investors to acquire single-family homes that “could otherwise be purchased by an individual owner-occupant.”

Data from Statistics Canada shows that the share of single-detached houses owned by “for-profit businesses” in Canada is under 3 percent, but this data does not specify whether these businesses are large institutional investors.

Ottawa had previously considered restricting purchasing of homes by institutional investors, but has not followed through on it.

Outlook in Canada

As housing prices surged in 2022 and supply tightened, the federal government said it would take a more active role in addressing housing affordability and supporting the provinces. One key measure was a two-year ban, introduced in January 2023, on foreign investors purchasing residential properties in Canada—a ban that was extended by another two years in 2025.

The 2024 Fall Economic Statement said that under current rules, Canadians may end up bidding against multi-billion dollar hedge funds for homes, prompting the federal government to launch consultations on “restricting large corporate investors from buying existing single-family homes in Canada.”

The document added that Ottawa would gather input from stakeholders, the scope of investor activity in the single-family home market, and potential restrictions that would keep homes available to those looking to buy. It said further details would be announced in Budget 2025.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Budget 2025, however, makes no mention of this policy. Finance Canada and Housing Minister Gregor Robertson’s office did not respond to an Epoch Times request for comment.

The extent to which large-scale investors are driving the purchase of single-family homes in Canada remains unclear. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation referred The Epoch Times to Statistics Canada, which referenced data showing that in 2023, the share of single-detached houses owned by for-profit businesses ranged from 1.6 percent to 2.9 percent in the six provinces where the data was available.

However, the data does not indicate what share of these for-profit owners are the “large corporate investors” highlighted by the federal government.

A 2023 report from Statistics Canada found that the vast majority of residential property owners—over 80 percent—owned only one property. Fewer than 2 percent were owned by businesses or government entities, while the remainder consisted of individuals holding multiple properties.

An earlier report by Statistics Canada covering housing trends in 2019 and 2020 found that between 29 and 41 percent of the housing stock in Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia was owned by those with multiple properties. However, this would apply to both corporations and smaller landlords.

It is also unclear how much of an impact institutional buying of single-family homes is having on overall housing prices, which have surged by over 25 percent in the last five years. The average house price in Canada rose from $532,000 at the start of 2020 to $802,000 in 2022, but has since fallen to around $675,000 at the end of 2025.

A surge in immigration beginning in 2021 put upward pressure on housing prices, with Canada’s population increasing from 38 million in July 2020 to an estimated 41.5 million by January 2026. According to estimates from the federal immigration department, immigrants accounted for 11 percent of the rise in housing prices in smaller towns and 21 percent in larger cities (populations over 100,000) between 2006 and 2021.

While there is a lack of accessible data, some experts say that major corporations buying up property in Canada doesn’t appear to be a main factor contributing to housing prices in the country.

David Amborski, a professor emeritus at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, said he is skeptical that institutional investors drive up housing and rental prices, as they take some resale supply off the housing market, but do not reduce the overall housing stock. He also said these institutional investors would not be able to raise prices themselves.

“Some people assume that because they are investors, they can set their prices. But they’re facing a whole rental market, and they can’t set their rents too high, or they won’t rent the units,” he said. “The prices are not determined by the individual owners … but rather determined by the market.”

Daniel Foch, the chief real estate officer at Valery.ca, said there is no sign of the government planning to ban institutional investors from buying homes in Canada, saying the focus will likely be “more on taxes and disclosure rather than outright bans.”

“There’s always a chance something similar could pop up politically, but for now, it’s not on the radar,” Foch said, adding he does not believe institutional investors are as “big of a problem” in Canada compared to the United States.

US Market

In the United States, there is a higher proportion of investors buying up homes compared to Canada.

While 20 percent of all single-family homes in the United States are owned by investors, 91 percent of these are small investors with fewer than 11 properties, according to BatchData. In the second quarter of 2025, large institutional investors that have more than 1,000 properties made up less than 2.5 percent of purchases.

However, real estate investors purchasing homes are a growing phenomenon in the United States. In the second quarter of 2025, they accounted for one-third of buyers of single-family residential properties, acquiring roughly 27 percent of single-family homes. According to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, investors represented about 20 percent of U.S. single-family home sales in 2022.

Blackstone Inc., a U.S. asset manager, has been notably active in buying single-family homes in the United States since 2021. As of March 2025, the company reported owning roughly 63,000 single-family homes—about 0.06 percent of the total U.S. stock. The company has argued this share is so small it would be “virtually impossible” for it to move the market on its own.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in 2024 that following the 2008 financial crisis, large institutional investors buying up foreclosed homes may have contributed to increasing home prices and rents, but it was difficult to separate the impact of this from other factors like market conditions and demographic factors.

A 2024 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said that while institutional ownership of single-family homes may improve the quality of the housing stock through maintenance on homes, it may contribute to a decrease in the homeownership rate. “The overall impact of this increase in investor ownership remains unclear,” the report said.

While there were concerns in 2022 that Blackstone would come to Canada and buy up residential homes after it announced plans in May to establish an office in Toronto, the company confirmed in June that it had no interest in doing so. Blackstone did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Amborski said concerns from a few years ago about large institutions coming to Canada to buy up housing never materialized, likely because “housing prices were so expensive that it didn’t make sense to do it.”