The federal government’s landmark settlement with RealPage was meant to resolve one of the most consequential antitrust battles in modern housing. Instead, it clarified just enough to let the industry move forward while leaving the most consequential questions unanswered.

At the center of the case is a simple but unsettling allegation: that landlords weren’t really competing at all. They were following pricing recommendations generated by a shared algorithm trained on confidential competitor data, reshaping how rents were set across entire markets.

Now, even with a settlement in place, the legal, financial, and regulatory fallout is only accelerating. Private lawsuits, state-level crackdowns, and growing scrutiny of algorithmic pricing threaten not just software companies, but the economic assumptions underpinning trillions of dollars in real estate.

The White House has laid out more detail on its evolving plan to curb large investors in the single-family home market, seeking to tilt the balance back toward individual homeowners. The proposal would target institutional buyers — those owning hundreds or thousands of homes — by restricting their ability to purchase additional properties or potentially by setting caps on how many units they can hold. Administration officials are pitching it as a tool to cool competition with first-time and moderate-income buyers, who often struggle to compete with deep-pocketed funds in bidding wars for entry-level inventory.

At the core of the policy debate is a question that has dogged housing markets for years: do large investor buyers meaningfully drive up prices and reduce affordability, or are they simply part of a broader demand pool that reflects deeper supply constraints? Analysts aligned with the administration point to data showing that small landlords and mom-and-pop investors still hold the lion’s share of single-family rentals, while institutional ownership remains a relatively small slice of the overall stock. If the goal is to materially boost homeownership for owner-occupants, capping institutional participation may have only a marginal effect in markets where supply is tight, construction is slow, and credit costs remain high.

There are practical and legal hurdles as well. Limiting who can buy property touches on complex questions of commerce and equal treatment; past efforts to regulate landlords at the local level have often run into resistance on grounds of fairness and unintended market distortion. Restricting qualified buyers could also shrink liquidity or dissuade capital that provides financing for renovations or maintenance in weaker neighborhoods. Without addressing the root causes of affordability (supply bottlenecks, zoning barriers, and the high cost of construction) a ban or cap on institutional purchases is unlikely to move the affordability needle significantly on its own. What it may do is change who owns entry-level homes, not whether those homes are affordable to entry-level buyers.

Commercial real estate distress is no longer a story confined to office towers, but office remains the most troubled corner of the market. According to a recent Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) figures on debt maturities and loan performance, stress is peaking where fundamentals are weakest, yet strains are rippling outward. Office vacancy and delinquency metrics are far worse than other sectors, but retail, hospitality, and even some multifamily portfolios are also showing signs of pressure amid higher interest rates and refinancing challenges.

The MBA’s report highlights why office is driving much of the distress narrative. Roughly 24 percent of office property loans are maturing in 2025, a higher share than most other sectors, and refinancing at today’s higher interest rates is often difficult or unattractive for owners. At the same time, the MBA’s delinquency data show that commercial mortgage performance remains mixed, with capitalization and repayment risk varying by lender type and property class. CMBS delinquencies, in particular, have ticked higher, underscoring how securitized debt markets are wrestling with loan performance tied to weaker fundamentals.

Office’s troubles stem from secular changes in workplace demand and have depressed cash flows and values more than in sectors like industrial or multifamily. But rising maturities, slower rent growth, and wider bid-ask spreads are beginning to show up outside office as well, meaning traditional lenders and investors are treating distress as a broader financing problem, not just an office glitch. The takeaway is that while office still leads distress, the cracks are widening, and capital markets may start pricing risk more uniformly unless transaction and performance data improve.

Propmodo Daily is written and edited by Franco Faraudo with contributions from readers like you and the Propmodo team.

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