What’s in This Week’s Issue…

Good morning. For years, America’s housing crisis has been framed around a single culprit: Wall Street.

Earlier this month, President Trump formalized that narrative by signing an executive order to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes. The promise was simple: remove investors, restore affordability.

On paper, it looked decisive.

But in reality, it exposed a deeper problem most housing debates avoid: America’s housing crisis didn’t begin with private equity.

So this week…

• 🏆 The Big Play: Why Private Equity Isn’t the Only Villain in America’s Housing Crisis

• 💪 The Power Move: Why housing prices are controlled by scarcity, not ownership

• 💵 Follow the Money: Why is Canada modelling a US invasion now?

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🏆 The Big Play

The biggest money power story of the week.

Why Private Equity Isn’t the Only Villain in America’s Housing Crisis

At first glance, the housing story feels straightforward:

Investors buy homes → Families get outbid → Prices rise.

If housing were just about who owns homes, banning buyers would fix the problem.

But housing is never just about ownership.

And to understand why investor bans don’t solve affordability, you need to understand three structural realities the housing debate consistently ignores:

1. Affordability vs Scarcity Trap

The United States is short between 3 and 7 million housing units today.

That gap didn’t appear suddenly:

• Over the last decade, housing units grew roughly 9.5%, while population grew 6.7%.

• Housing construction per capita has never recovered to post-World War II levels.

• Even after the pandemic construction surge, housing starts remain far below the long-term trend needed to meet demand.

The consequences weren’t subtle:

• Home prices surged faster than rents, pushing price-to-rent ratios up ~20% post-2020

• Rental vacancy rates collapsed in high-growth metros

• Demand concentrated into fewer available units

Now here’s the part that changes how you read the villain story.

Nationally, institutional investors own ~3% of single-family homes, roughly 450,000 units. Their ownership is geographically concentrated in Sun Belt markets where zoning is not very restrictive.

In other words, capital arrived after scarcity was already locked in.

And when institutional buyers pulled back in certain markets, prices didn’t reset. They stayed high because the shortage didn’t disappear.

Which raises the next uncomfortable question: If America didn’t run out of buyers, why didn’t it build more homes?

2. The Regulatory Paralysis

The binding constraint on housing today is not money. It’s permission.

Across major U.S. metros, large shares of residential land are locked into single-family zoning, which legally prohibits apartments, duplexes, and small multifamily housing.

On top of zoning bans sit stacked constraints:

• Minimum lot sizes bind ~18.5% of single-family construction

• Height, density, and floor-area-ratio limits that cap usable land

• Parking minimums that add tens of thousands of dollars per unit

• Environmental review processes stretched far beyond intent

Regulation alone now adds ~25% to per-unit construction costs in many markets.

And here’s the political reality underneath it all. Homeowners benefit from rising prices, and they vote in local elections. But renters don’t.

So scarcity becomes protected systematically.

Which brings us to the moment where politics enters the story.

3. The Political Fix

This is where Trump’s institutional ban enters the equation.

Institutional investors account for a small share of total housing stock, but play a disproportionate role in providing rental liquidity and financing construction where individual buyers cannot.

So when investors are removed without expanding supply:

transaction liquidity falls, rental inventory contracts, construction capital pulls back, and new supply slows further

History shows the pattern clearly that buyer restrictions may soften prices briefly at the margin, but long-term affordability deteriorates as production stalls.

That’s also how scarcity reasserts itself.

This risk is magnified by construction economics already under strain:

• The U.S. faces a 350,000-worker construction labor shortage by 2026

• Small and mid-size builders collapsed post-2008, falling from ~98,000 firms to ~48,000

• Housing starts never returned to pre-2008 trendlines due to tighter developer financing

Private equity filled part of the vacuum left by this collapse. It didn’t create it.

So, removing capital without fixing supply is more of an attempt to freeze the system than to lower prices.

💪 The Power Moves

Playbook for understanding the game of power.

Why Attacking Buyers Never Fixes a Supply Problem

If you followed the housing debate long enough, you’ll notice a pattern: every few years, the villain changes: Developers, landlords, private equity.

But the policy response stays the same.

We keep trying to change who participates in the housing market, while leaving untouched how much housing is allowed to exist.

That distinction matters more than it sounds.

Because ownership determines distribution, and supply determines price.

So when supply is fixed, every ownership rule becomes a reshuffling exercise. Someone wins, someone loses, but affordability doesn’t arrive.

That’s why bans, caps, and restrictions feel decisive but fail quietly.

They never touch the binding constraint.

The Takeaway:

When you hear a housing “solution,” ask yourself one question before believing it:

Does this policy meaningfully increase the number of homes that can be built where people actually want to live, or does it just decide who gets to fight over the same limited stock?

If the answer is the second, the crisis isn’t being solved.

It’s being managed politically.

💵 Following the Money

Three of the wildest financial and corruption stories from around the world.

#1 - Canada quietly models Taliban-style response to hypothetical US invasion 

#2 - Greenland prepares for American attack as Europe pushes back on Trump

#3 - Starlink becomes lifeline, and target, in Iran’s protest blackout

✨ Poll time!

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