Private companies buying up homes in metro Atlanta have made the American dream of homeownership unattainable for many families, and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock said Black Georgians seeking to buy their first homes have been hurt more than most.
Investors own at least 25% of all the single family rental properties in Atlanta, the largest share among U.S. cities across the nation. It’s why Warnock, D-Georgia, is backing a new federal bill provision that would put a national limit on the number of single-family homes private equity firms can buy. Warnock expects the Senate will pass the measure Thursday.
“It’s the most vulnerable who are disproportionately impacted by this, and this is one more instance of me trying to deliver for ordinary people,” Warnock said. “I want to make sure that we don’t crowd out the market with private equity swooping in and dominating the single-family rental market so much that there’s nothing left to buy.”
Metro Atlanta has been the epicenter of corporate investors buying up single-family homes over the past 20 years. The practice resulted in firms extracting more than $4 billion in collective wealth from homeowners in majority-Black neighborhoods between 2007 and 2016, according to a Georgia Tech study.
The bipartisan measure, known as the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act of 2025, includes a provision that would enact a 350-unit cap on the number of single-family homes investment management companies can buy across the nation.
Warnock’s office said firms would face a $1 million fine or be forced to pay three times the purchase price of the property involved for each violation. He was one of the U.S. senators who negotiated that provision to protect families looking to buy homes in Georgia.
The bill still requires approval from the U.S. House and President Donald Trump before it becomes law.
Limiting the real estate market reach of private equity firms has gained bipartisan support recently — including from Republicans like Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio — in addition to Warnock, Sen. Jon Ossoff, and other Democrats.
Trump backed the idea via a Jan. 20 executive order, which drew scorn from some of his fellow Republicans.
Warnock clarified that the ROAD to Housing Act’s private equity limit provision wouldn’t apply to the more than 60% of the parcels in majority-Black Atlanta neighborhoods that are already owned by corporate entities, according to the authors of a “Who Owns Atlanta?” study unveiled earlier this week.
“The legislation is forward looking,” Warnock said. “Without this legislation, you would see the arc of that kind of massive purchasing continuing without anything to stop it.”
In Georgia, Republican and Democratic state lawmakers have been debating their own bill to limit private equity homeownership.
State GOP leaders have declined to support the idea during previous recent-year legislative sessions, but Trump’s recent support for a federal private equity ban may have made the idea more palletable.
State Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, introduced a bill in February that would bar investment companies from owning more than 500 single family homes in Georgia. The state Senate approved Dolezal’s bill on March 3.
Housing justice advocates have blamed the influence of Georgia real estate lobbyists for the lack of action on the issue. Warnock said the problem requires lawmakers to decide who they’re elected to help.
“All legislators have to ask themselves, who are you here to work for?” he said. “Are you here to work for corporate interests who have an outsized voice already in our politics, or are you here to fight for ordinary people?”
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