What global policy shifts mean for institutional real estate, as told by Roofstock's Gary Beasley—here's the recording

On Thursday, January 29, ResiClub hosted a special webinar looking at the institutional side of the housing sector for ResiClub members and Rookstock clients.

I interviewed Roofstock executive chairman & co-founder Gary Beasley and asked him for his take on the proposed institutional homebuying ‘ban’ and where he thinks institutional capital involvement in the housing and single-family rental markets goes from here.

If you couldn’t attend the live webinar, no worries. You can find the webinar recording here.

Prior to founding Roofstock, Gary Beasley was CEO of Waypoint Homes, a single-family rental platform launched in 2009 during a period of historic disruption in the U.S. housing market. In the wake of the financial crisis, millions of homes sat vacant or in distress, and Waypoint focused on acquiring and rehabilitating these properties, returning them to productive use as professionally managed rental housing. In 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that Waypoint became the first institutional platform to assemble a portfolio of more than 1,000 single-family rental homes—helping establish an emerging asset class that prioritized operational discipline, resident experience, and neighborhood stability. However, while institutional investors were beginning to realize there was upside in the space, the process was far from sophisticated.

Betting that single-family rentals would attract the attention of more investors over time, Beasley left Waypoint (which was rolled up into Starwood and then later into institutional landlord giant Invitation Homes) to co-founded Roofstock in 2015 to help large and small investors acquire and sell single-family rentals. In the years that followed, institutional capital believed the housing market had become undersupplied and began deploying more capital into build-to-rent.

Fast-forward to 2025, and institutional capital is under political pressure. Look no further than January 7, when President Donald Trump announced that: “I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it.”

On January 20, Trump signed an order outlining his preliminary “ban.” The White House says it intends to pursue legislation to codify the policies into law. Within 30 days, the order requires Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to define "large institutional investors.” Then within 60 days, government agencies and government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) won’t be allowed to approve, insure, guarantee, or securitize SFH purchases by "large institutional investors." In other words, the order doesn’t outright ban institutional homebuying—or force large landlords to sell off their existing portfolios—but instead seeks to restrict their access to federally backed financing and other forms of government support when acquiring single-family homes. The order does have an exception: Build-to-rent.

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