Capitol Beat is a nonprofit news service operated by the Georgia Press Educational Foundation that provides coverage of state government to newspapers throughout Georgia. For more information visit capitol-beat.org.

In a rare bipartisan moment during this year’s legislative session in Georgia, Democrats and Republicans agreed on how to do something about what they said was a core cause of Georgia’s housing affordability problem.

The state Senate passed a bill that sought to punish institutional investors with more than 500 single-family rental homes.

Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, accused investors of exacerbating the housing crisis by outbidding regular purchasers trying to buy a house, thus driving up prices and forcing many would-be homebuyers to rent instead.

“I have a grave fear that we are becoming a nation of renters and not homeowners,” Dolezal said at a Senate committee hearing last month. The Senate went on to pass his legislation 49-3.

Senate Bill 463 would have enforced the ownership cap by allowing lawsuits against these companies and by withdrawing their tax credits and deductions.

But Dolezal’s bill fell apart Thursday, when a committee of the state House deleted the language, replacing it with another measure.

The legislative session ends Thursday, so time is running out.

Something similar happened last year. Legislation that sought a 2,000-home cap for institutional owners failed to exit a House committee after the industry raised constitutional concerns, as happened with SB 463.

The lawmakers were pursuing a popular cause.

An Atlanta Regional Commission survey in 11 metro Atlanta counties last summer found housing affordability was the No. 1 concern. The 2025 Metro Atlanta Speaks Survey said 44% blamed developers and 35% blamed investors buying up homes to rent.

Last spring, U.S. Sen. John Ossoff announced an investigation into “large, out-of-state companies driving up home prices in Georgia.”

A news conference at the Democrat’s Atlanta office featured renters complaining about unsafe conditions. One reported dangerous debris embedded in his backyard. Another reported gas leaks that she said went unaddressed for weeks.

In a demonstration of bipartisan frustration, President Donald Trump, in January, penned an executive order titled “Stopping Wall Street from Competing with Main Street Homebuyers.”

Two weeks later, Dolezal, who is running for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor, introduced SB 463.

A 2024 report by Georgia State University and Rutgers University found that three companies collectively owned more than 19,000 rental homes in metro Atlanta. The report said corporate landlords were drawn to the area by cheap housing and lax tenant protections.

One of them, Amherst, told Capitol Beat that the industry provides housing to families that cannot qualify for a mortgage.

“We understand that we’re easy scapegoats,” said Dagney Gomez del Campo, an Amherst spokeswoman. But she pointed to data about the service her company provides: Amherst spent over $526 million renovating more than 8,300 homes during at least 14 years of operations in Georgia when it housed about 57,000 renters.

Renters’ credit scores were typically in the 600s, below the 700s common among first-time homebuyers with a government-sponsored mortgage, according to Amherst.

Sharon Franklin, a renter through Amherst subsidiary MainStreet Renewal, described an idyllic home she and her two older sisters, both retired, are renting in Stockbridge.

It is a quiet street with wildlife roaming the property, she said, and the company has been responsive to repair requests.

At 61 and nearing retirement herself, Franklin said she had no interest in buying a house with a 30-year mortgage.

If lawmakers penalize companies like Amherst, she said, “who are we going to rent from?”

Industry fights back

Former Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens, now working for the National Home Rental Council, helped the industry attack SB 463 at a House committee hearing two weeks ago.

It was a repeat performance of his efforts against the legislation for a 2000-home cap last year.

He said Dolezal’s bill had “numerous constitutional infirmities” and was “a gift to lawyers to sue.”

The assumption of the bill — that renters would be homeowners if the investors did not already own the houses — was false, he said. The reality is that they cannot qualify for a mortgage and there is “an abject shortage” of housing, he added.

Others from the industry who spoke at the hearing contended that such a law would lead to less rehabilitation of dilapidated housing and fewer rental options.

“Good policy should be grounded in facts and data, not assumptions and misleading narratives,” said Stephen Davis, a lobbyist for Progress Residential, a multistate rental home company. “SB 463 creates serious unintended consequences: mass evictions, higher rents, lower home values, and greater school turnover.”

Jason Parker, president of rental home construction company Two Resi Build, pointed to a foundational problem. He said his company builds 100 to 150 houses a year.

 “If we could build more homes, it would absolutely reduce the average house price,” he said. “Our biggest challenge is the land cost.”

Why houses got so expensive

Institutional investors bought up large swaths of housing stock when prices cratered during the Great Recession.

As of June 2022, they owned a quarter of Atlanta’s single-family rental home market, according to a 2024 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The report said these investors may have contributed to rising rents and home prices. This may have helped “stabilize” neighborhoods, the report said, adding that it was unclear whether this affected homeownership opportunities.

The rate of institutional ownership of single-family homes in Atlanta is six times the national average, said Alex Horowitz, project director of the housing policy initiative at The Pew Charitable Trusts.

But institutional investors own just 3% of all Atlanta single-family houses, he said. “Nothing that’s 3% of the market is driving the market. … And most research on single-family rentals suggests that they lower rents by adding new supply to the market overall.”

Pew’s research indicates that one main driver of housing unaffordability is the tightening of mortgage lending rules after the recession, when so many owners went into foreclosure. The standards increased while their credit ratings fell.

Another big driver is government development policy, and it is something state lawmakers could do something about, Horowitz said.

Pew released a report in mid-March that showed how Austin, Texas, reduced housing costs by implementing policies to encourage denser development, such as allowing large apartment buildings near jobs and transit and reducing minimum mandated lot sizes and parking space requirements.

Median rents fell from $1,546 in December 2021 to $1,296 by January 2026 even though Austin had added 18,000 residents. 

The city added 120,000 housing units between 2015 and 2024, a 30% increase that was three times the national average, Pew reported.

Pew’s findings in Austin echoed its findings about similar policies in four other cities: Minneapolis; Portland, Or.; New Rochelle, N.Y.; and Tysons, Va.

Horowitz said Texas enacted seven laws last year that should result in a lot of new housing, such as allowing apartments on commercially zoned land and homes on smaller lots, and expanding use of manufactured housing.

A path forward for Georgia

One Georgia bill would have taken the state in the direction of Texas.

Senate Bill 508 sought to offer financial incentives to encourage Georgia communities to reduce minimum lot sizes and parking requirements and to take other steps to increase density.

Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, the main sponsor, said it is difficult for local elected officials to make such changes because existing residents tend to push back. Not in my backyard, or “NIMBYism,” is a powerful force, she said.

Lawmakers are more insulated from local pressure, she said, so if zoning is to change, the push can more easily come from the Legislature.

Her legislation probably never had a chance because all the other sponsors were Democrats, and the General Assembly is controlled by Republicans.

But Parent and every other Democrat present voted for Dolezal’s corporate homeownership cap when it reached the Senate floor. It’s a good bill, she said.

Next year, Republicans should reintroduce her bill and call it their own, said Parent, who is not running for re-election.

“I think it is something they should hop on and pass it themselves,” she said. “It isn’t really a partisan issue.”