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SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah lawmaker wants to prevent large companies from buying homes in the state and turning them into rentals.
Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, told KSL-TV he's working on a bill that would prohibit multinational corporations from purchasing single-family houses in Utah.
Clancy comes at this issue both as a lawmaker and an aspiring homeowner. He currently rents but wants to buy, although he's running into the same problem many do. The housing market is expensive.
"It's incredibly hard," Clancy said.
Clancy said his bill would make it easier for Utahns like him to get into their own homes.
"We want to make sure that we keep the market fair, allow single-family homes to be purchased by families and not by massive companies," Clancy said.
Those companies have gotten a lot of media attention for buying up large numbers of homes across the U.S. But it's not happening as much in Utah.
"Institutional investors represent less than 3% of our current single-family rental stock," said Dejan Eskic, a housing analyst at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah. "The majority of investors in our market I would classify as 'mom and pop' investors."
Eskic added that companies buying up homes is more of a problem in places like the southeastern United States.
"They are not the issue in our market like they are say, for example, in Atlanta where they represent 25% of the market, or in Jacksonville, Florida, where they are about 21% of the market," Eskic said.
Clancy acknowledged the low percentage of Utah homes owned by institutional investors, but he said it's still time to do something about it.
"If we can get ahead of this issue before it becomes 10%, 12% of the market share, that's where we're going to have the best impact," he said.
A similar bill targeting institutional investors was introduced in Congress in 2022 but hasn't gone anywhere yet.
Clancy said his proposal is patterned after a law passed this year prohibiting certain foreign entities like China from buying land in Utah. He said he's working to ensure his bill is constitutional and can make it through the legislative process.
"I think that there's bipartisan opposition, but there's bipartisan support as well," Clancy said.
The bill could be considered in the upcoming general session, which starts in January.
