What you'll learn

• 1 (00:29) **Amanda Cantrell's search for a rental** - A renter in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, notices that almost all available single-family homes are owned by big corporations, sparking a feeling of unfairness that resonates across the political spectrum.
• 2 (01:22) **The legislative response: a bipartisan bill** - The 21st Century Road to Housing Act aims to restrict large institutional investors from owning too many single-family homes, but nationally they own less than 1% of homes.
• 3 (01:53) **Today's question: Are corporate landlords the real villain?** - The hosts announce they will comb through the evidence on big investors owning homes and assess the case for banning them.
• 4 (03:15) **The bill's potential impact** - If passed, the bill would essentially throttle the entire industry of large corporate landlords in suburbia by preventing them from buying any more single-family homes.
• 5 (03:32) **History: The 2008 Great Recession and the rise of institutional investors** - Professor Stephen Billings explains how investors bought foreclosed homes cheaply after the 2008 crisis, discovering that renting them out was more lucrative than flipping them.
• 6 (04:21) **The backlash and the grain of truth** - Rising house prices in the early 2020s led politicians from both parties to blame institutional investors, but Stephen Billings says they only drive up prices "a little bit."
• 7 (04:59) **Corporate landlords can lower rental prices** - Stephen Billings notes that corporate landlords actually tend to reduce rental prices by bringing more rental homes into the market, which matters since a third of American families rent.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app