What the law says
Section 1001 of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, codified at 42 U.S.C. 19521, defines a large institutional investor as a for-profit entity in the business of owning or renting single-family homes that, alone or in concert with others, has investment control of 350 or more single-family homes. Control is counted through affiliates, general partners, managing members and investment managers, so a fund that holds 200 homes but is run by a platform that controls 10,000 is covered.
HUD has its own duties under the section. By January 7, 2027 it must set up a renter outreach resource, a toll-free number and a public website that help renters of properties owned by a covered investor notify federal agencies about rental disputes. HUD must respond to those renters, investigate reports of possible violations of federal law, give renters contact information for the right state authority when a report involves state law, and send Congress a public report by March 31 each year.
From the effective date, a covered investor may not purchase, or enter into a contract to directly or indirectly purchase, any single-family home. Purchase includes transfers, mergers, construction, foreclosures and bulk purchases, with or without cash. The effective date is 180 days after enactment: January 7, 2027. The civil penalty can be as much as the greater of $1,000,000 per violation or three times the purchase price. Covered investors do not have to sell what they own, and the prohibition sunsets fifteen years after it starts. The prohibition does not reach a purchase made in connection with a restructuring or other reorganization of ownership of homes that were owned or purchased on or before July 11, 2026 (42 U.S.C. 19521(b)(2)(B)). It also does not reach the excepted purchases, listed here with the statute's letters from 42 U.S.C. 19521(a)(2):
- (A) Homes for sale: a home that is newly constructed, renovated or a rental conversion for sale by the investor, and not as a residence rented pending sale.
- (B) Build-to-rent: a program where the investor buys, builds or builds and keeps newly constructed homes to be managed as rentals, in a community that is all renters or a mix of owners and renters. Treasury's proposed rule would define a build-to-rent program as one buying homes that no owner has lived in, within 18 months of the certificate of occupancy, and that renters occupy first.
- (C) Renovate-to-rent: a program that substantially rehabilitates homes that do not meet structural or core system elements of local building codes and spends at least 15 percent of the purchase price on improvements. Both tests, not one.
- (D) Homeownership program: rent and fees no higher than the investor charges on similar homes outside the program, a contract treated as a consumer credit transaction secured by a dwelling or real property, positive rent reporting to consumer reporting agencies that the renter opts into, and meaningful financial support from the investor, including price concessions, toward the renter's purchase of the home. All four are required.
- (E) Program to boost homeownership: positive rent reporting that the renter opts into, the right of first refusal and a 30-day first-look period, and possibly meaningful financial support from the investor, including price concessions, toward the renter's purchase of the home they rent or another home.
- (F) Debts: a purchase in connection with satisfying debts previously contracted in good faith, where the investor has the right to repossess the home under that contract.
- (G) Lenders and servicers: a purchase by a mortgage servicer, lender or other entity with a legal right to the home, for loss mitigation or to comply with servicing or investor obligations and not as a long-term investment strategy, made solely as a result of a foreclosure, a deed in lieu of foreclosure, enforcement of a mortgage, deed of trust or other security interest, or operation of law following borrower default.
- (H) Other large investors: a purchase from another large institutional investor that owned the home on July 11, 2026 or bought it in compliance with the section.
- (I) Investors that are not covered: a purchase from an investor that is not covered, if it happens no more than two years after the effective date, so through January 7, 2029.
- (J) 55-and-older communities: a newly constructed, renovated or rental-conversion home intended and operated as part of a community for households with at least one member aged 55 or older, that meets the visitability standards HUD establishes.
- (K) Combinations: a single purchase, or a combination or series of purchases, described in (A) through (J).
How it got here
On January 7, 2026 the President posted that he was taking steps to ban institutional investors from buying more single-family homes. Executive Order 14376, signed January 20, 2026, set the policy, told Treasury to define large institutional investor, told USDA, HUD, VA, GSA and FHFA to stop federal programs and the GSEs from facilitating such purchases, and asked Congress to codify it. H.R. 6644 passed Congress in June and became law on July 11, 2026 without the President's signature.
Treasury's first proposed rule under the statute (31 CFR Part 36, docket TREAS-DO-2026-0529) was published October 23, 2026 (91 FR 66799). Comments must be received on or before November 23, 2026. It would define the build-to-rent, renovate-to-rent, homeownership and boost-homeownership programs, clarify the exceptions for satisfying debts, loss mitigation and purchases from another large institutional investor, and define in the business of and passive investor. It confirms the January 7, 2027 start and says nothing about wholesalers or contract assignments. It is not final.
What it means for an assigned contract
In our reading, assigning your purchase contract to a covered fund after January 7, 2027 is a contract to directly or indirectly purchase a single-family home, and a double close to a covered fund is a sale to a covered fund. The statute does not say the word wholesaler, and Treasury has not ruled on assignments. Treasury has said, in a different exception, that a covered investor should not be able to rely on an exception just because a transaction is routed through an intermediary, and it has asked for comment on anti-evasion conditions for indirect purchases. That points one way.
Contracts signed before January 7, 2027 that close after it are an open question, and Treasury's proposed rule does not say how they are treated. If you are holding one with a covered buyer, ask the buyer's counsel in writing before the date, and have a second buyer lined up. This is general information, not legal advice.
The big funds were already leaving DFW resale
The law did not change what the largest owners were doing in Dallas–Fort Worth. It confirmed it. The public record from the two listed REITs and the data firms that track institutional portfolios reads the same way.
- Invitation Homes bought 2,410 wholly owned homes in 2025, almost all through homebuilder relationships, and sold 1,356. In the first half of 2026 it bought 457 and sold 1,140, and it raised 2026 disposition guidance to $750 to $950 million against $150 to $350 million of acquisitions. All 196 homes it bought in the second quarter came from builders.
- AMH's 2026 guidance shows no wholly owned acquisitions at all, against 1,300 to 1,500 newly built deliveries from its own development program. It sold 1,318 homes in the first half of 2026, including 132 in Dallas–Fort Worth at an average of $255,535 net proceeds, with 56 more held for sale. Its DFW portfolio of 3,573 homes averages 2,078 square feet and about 22 years old.
- Parcl Labs data reported in July 2026 showed the seven largest landlords had sold 3,180 more homes than they bought since January 1, and their active listings more than doubled from 4,166 on February 1 to 9,447 in July.
- The Government Accountability Office counted about 30,000 institutional-owned homes in Dallas–Fort Worth in 2024, about 9 percent of single-family rentals and about 1 percent of all single-family homes. Those owners sold more than 4,000 Dallas homes from 2019 to 2024, the most of the six metros it studied.
- Across the country, institutional owners bought 0.3 percent of the homes sold in 2024, by Blackstone's own count citing John Burns data. They were never most of the market. In DFW they were a slice of the suburban ring.
Who still buys wholesale deals in DFW
The buyers that never were covered are the ones who always closed most wholesale deals: rental operators with a few dozen to a few hundred homes, local landlords, rehabbers and the build-to-rent builders who want lots and not houses. The 350-home line is counted with affiliates, so ask every fund buyer the same question and get the answer in writing: how many single-family homes do you and your affiliates control today? A buyer under the line can also keep buying from you after the date.
Large for-sale renovators stay lawful buyers under exception (A), which covers homes that are newly constructed, renovated or a rental conversion for sale. Renovate-to-rent programs that meet both tests stay lawful. Everyone else over the line is out of the market for your contract from January 7, 2027, unless one of the exceptions above applies.
What to do with your contract now
FundPlug routes files to buyers whose box they fit and who can still close. Texas has no state law of its own on this: SB 443, which would have capped corporate owners at ten homes, died in committee in 2025, and the Legislature does not meet again until January 2027.
- Price to a landlord or a rehabber, not to a fund premium. The calculator shows both ceilings.
- Do not promise a seller a fund close. Promise a close.
- Keep the written disclosures Texas Property Code 5.0205 requires to the owner and to any buyer; nothing in the federal law changes them.
- Ask any desk you send to which of its buyers are under the line, and how it knows.
- Watch Treasury's docket. The final rule may say something about assignments, and the desk will update this page when it does.