Institutional investors own about 72,000 single-family homes in metro Atlanta—more than double any other U.S. metropolitan area.
A recent report from the Washington, D.C.-based American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), titled “The New Rent Seekers: How Atlanta Became Ground Zero for Wall Street Single-Family Rentals, and What to Do About It,” details how metro Atlanta became the epicenter of corporate ownership of single-family homes and examines its effects on housing affordability, homeownership rates, and communities.
Corporate-Owned Homes: Why Atlanta Became Ground Zero’
The report traces the trend back to the aftermath of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.
Atlanta was hit particularly hard: home prices dropped sharply (17.7% in 2012, the largest decline nationally), leading to widespread foreclosures. Banks seized more homes in the Atlanta area than anywhere else in the country at one point.
Federal policies played a key role in enabling institutional investors:
- Support for bulk purchases of foreclosed homes by large firms rather than widespread mortgage modifications.
- Tightened lending standards that limited competition from individual buyers.
- Weak local tenant protections in Georgia, including swift evictions and limited habitability standards (updated only recently), which lowered risks for absentee corporate landlords.
Institutional investors snapped up homes at discounts, often paying cash, and turned them into rentals.
Three major corporations now control nearly 20,000 homes in the metro area, and seven firms own over 51,000 using various corporate aliases. In some neighborhoods and counties, large investors own a majority or up to 80% of single-family rentals.
Institutional ownership accounts for roughly 30% of metro Atlanta’s single-family rental stock—about 10 times the national average.
Build-to-Rent: The Next Frontier
The trend has evolved beyond buying existing homes. Atlanta has become a testing ground for “build-to-rent” (BTR) communities, where homes are constructed specifically as investor-owned rentals and never intended for individual purchase.
The region saw over 3,000 BTR units delivered in 2024 and ranks high nationally in BTR construction.
Entire neighborhoods, such as parts of McDonough and South Fulton’s Parkview Estates, now feature blocks of rental homes owned by large firms.
Impacts on Families and Housing
The AELP report argues that this shift has:
- Raised home prices and reduced homeownership — Contributing to as much as 25% of the decline in homeownership rates in Atlanta post-crisis. It estimates Georgia families lost about $5 billion in home equity, with Black homebuyers bearing roughly $3.5 billion of that loss.
- Affected tenants — With reports of rent hikes, poorer maintenance, and higher eviction rates compared to smaller landlords.
- Worsened affordability — Even as Atlanta’s prices look moderate nationally, they have outpaced local income growth more than in peer regions.
Proponents, including the National Rental Home Council, counter that these homes add needed supply and that restricting investor activity could reduce new housing construction. They emphasize that most single-family rentals (over 90%) remain owned by “mom-and-pop” landlords.
Policy Responses
The report comes amid federal debates over housing legislation.
The bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, which recently passed the Senate, includes provisions to limit large-scale institutional ownership of single-family homes, including build-to-rent models. Georgia Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff have supported efforts to curb corporate ownership.
Earlier executive actions and proposals under President Trump also addressed investor-owned homes.
Laurel Kilgour, the report’s author and AELP research manager, described Atlanta as a “guinea pig” for a model Wall Street hopes to scale nationwide. She warned that without intervention, more families could face a rental-only American Dream.
As housing shortages persist nationally, Atlanta’s experience offers a cautionary case study on the long-term effects of large-scale financialization of single-family housing.
The debate continues on balancing investment, supply, and accessibility for ordinary families.
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