As CBS News Atlanta previously reported, more than one in four single-family rental homes in metro Atlanta are owned by large corporate investors — more than 72,000 homes — giving the region one of the highest concentrations of institutional ownership anywhere in the United States.
Housing advocates have argued that those companies can outbid families with cash offers, reducing the number of homes available to first-time buyers while contributing to higher home prices and rents.
Warnock has repeatedly cited those trends in pushing the legislation, saying corporate investors have increasingly treated homes as financial assets instead of places for families to live.
Private Equity’s housing stock is actually pretty small when compared against so-called “Mom and Pop” landlords. This law creates exceptions for Mom-and-Pops that own ten properties or less.
PE accounts for an average of 2.4% of home ownership in the US. Mom-and-Pops take up another 6.5%, nearly 3x as much. This law will have an outsized impact on sunbelt cities where PE owns double-digits portions of the market, but most of the country won’t perceive these changes at all.