Georgia lawmakers are again trying to rein in Wall Street landlords, with a proposal to more than double the property taxes on big corporate homebuyers and put the issue directly to voters.
The bipartisan proposal is the Legislature’s most significant effort so far to reduce the influence of institutional homebuyers on Georgia housing markets, where bulk homebuying has raised home prices and shut out many first-time buyers. In metro Atlanta, institutional investors now own 30% of single-family rental homes, according to research from Georgia State University professor Taylor Shelton.
Sponsored by Rep. Derrick McCollum (R-Chestnut Mountain), House Bill 1228 and its companion, House Resolution 1244, would sharply hike property taxes on corporate homebuyers that own 1,000 or more single-family rental homes, by taxing those properties at 100% of the assessed value, instead of the 40% dictated by the Georgia Constitution.
The bill would require a constitutional amendment, so if passed, it would trigger a statewide voter referendum in November. McCollum says the measure will appeal to voters across party lines, noting that the additional tax revenue would be used to increase Georgians’ homestead exemptions on their primary residence.
“What this will do is level the playing field on mom-and-pop landlords,” McCollum added. “They won’t be taxed as high [as Wall Street investors], so they’ll be able to rent cheaper than these private equity groups.”
The proposal has attracted bipartisan sponsors – Republicans Joseph Gullett (R-Dallas) and Chuck Efstration (R-Mulberry) with Democrats Mary Margaret Oliver (D-Decatur), Phil Olaleye (D-Atlanta), and Esther Panitch (D-Sandy Springs). That signals broad legislative momentum for curbing the market power of institutional landlords after similar efforts failed in 2025.
Last year, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers proposed bills to close tax loopholes for institutional homebuyers and limit bulk home purchases. But those efforts faltered under pushback from the real estate industry and Republican lawmakers who worried that tougher rules would drive down home values, or interfere with investors’ property rights.
By increasing property taxes on bulk home purchasers — rather than trying to limit how many homes they can buy — McCollum said, his new approach reflects an enduring political reality at the Georgia statehouse: Proposals framed as correcting market distortions and protecting homeowners stand a better chance than those that directly curb corporate power.
Trump’s conflicting rhetoric
The push comes amid conflicting signals from the White House on addressing the role institutional homebuyers play in pricing out would-be homeowners.
President Donald Trump issued an unexpected executive order on Jan. 20 that seeks to restrict federal support for big investors bulk-buying single-family homes. The “American dream” of owning a home as a way to “build lifetime wealth,” his directive said, “has been increasingly out of reach for too many of our citizens, especially first-time homebuyers.” It added that young families “cannot effectively compete” with large investors, and that institutional homebuyers should be kept out of single-family housing markets.
“Trump finally is listening to the common-sense folks on the ground who see the institutional presence in our housing market to be unsustainable, unfair, and a poor practice to helping everyday folks step into home ownership — to share in the American dream,” said Olaleye, one of the Democrats sponsoring McCollum’s taxation bill, at the time.
But Trump struck a different chord just nine days later, saying at a Cabinet meeting on Jan. 29 that he wanted to “drive housing prices up” and keep existing homeowners wealthy. “We’re not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody who didn’t work very hard can buy a home,” he said.
Even so, McCollum said his proposal has gained momentum from Trump’s rhetoric. “Trump’s tweets and [executive order] have definitely helped my cause,” he said. Both Trump’s Jan. 20 attack on institutional homebuyers and subsequent emphasis on protecting home values, he added, teed up his constitutional amendment approach.
McCollum is also hoping Trump’s messaging will help revive his legislation from last session to cap at 2,000 the number of homes a corporation can own statewide. House Bill 555 foundered in 2025, due to concerns within his own party that it would interfere with property rights guaranteed by the Georgia Constitution. “I got it to the House floor,” McCollum said, “but we didn’t have enough Republicans on board.”
This year, McCollum has returned with a revised version, backed by five other Republican representatives. House Bill 1115 preserves the 2,000-home ownership cap, but changes how it would be enforced. Rather than relying on the state to police excess holdings, HB 1115 allows private lawsuits against companies that own more than 2,000 single-family homes.
Bona fide crackdown?
But one metro Atlanta Democrat, Rep. Ruwa Romman (D-Duluth), isn’t entirely convinced Trump’s executive order will spur a bona fide crackdown in the Legislature on Wall Street landlords. Romman’s proposal last year for a rental registry to track corporate landlord behavior never even made it out of the House, due to Georgia lawmakers’ stiff resistance against regulating landlords.
She thinks the president’s contradictory rhetoric reflects a deeper political reality under the Republican-controlled Gold Dome: broad agreement that Wall Street landlords are distorting the Georgia housing market, paired with deep resistance to doing anything that threatens real estate interests.
Fears that curbing institutional homebuyers would cause home prices to fall, Romman said, is one of the most effective arguments in the legislature against reforms. Many lawmakers worry that stabilizing home prices by reducing institutional homebuyers’ market influence could instead be misread as depreciation. “Sixty-five percent of Georgians are homeowners,” she pointed out.
But that leaves first-time homebuyers struggling to compete with cash-rich corporations, Romman added. “People just cannot out-compete a corporation,” she said.
While Trump’s executive order might provide political cover to Republican lawmakers wary of crossing the real estate industry, Romman said, local lobbyists and industry groups exert far more influence than shifting signals from Washington. Consequently, Trump’s executive order is unlikely to create a sudden appetite for regulation among Republican lawmakers, she said, “unless they are willing to buck their lobbyists.”