The Great American Housing Heist: How Corporate Consolidation Priced Out the Middle Class Nationwide

By Apirate Monk

In Dallas, Texas, the American Dream once felt within reach. As recently as 2011, a middle-class family in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex (DFW) could buy a home with an income roughly twice what was needed for a mortgage. Homes priced under $100,000 were plentiful, with one in five selling for less than $99,000. But today, the median home price in DFW has soared to over $440,000, nearly tripling in just over a decade. A household now needs at least $100,000 annually to afford a typical home in the city proper—far above the median income. This story of vanishing affordability isn’t unique to Dallas. From coast to coast, America’s cities—big and small, red and blue—are grappling with a housing crisis that has transformed the home from a cornerstone of stability into a financial asset for Wall Street, leaving millions of families priced out. The culprits? Corporate consolidation in homebuilding, institutional investors flooding the market, and a financial system that prioritizes profit over people.

The Dallas Story: A Microcosm of a National Crisis

Dallas was once a beacon of affordability. In the early 2010s, its decentralized homebuilding industry—driven by local contractors and funded by community banks—kept prices in check. A robust supply of starter homes ensured that families could plant roots without breaking the bank. But by 2024, the landscape had shifted dramatically. The top 10 homebuilders in DFW, led by giants like D.R. Horton and Lennar, now control 60% of new home sales, up from 35% in 2007. These “market-share-devouring juggernauts” use their financial muscle to offer below-market mortgage rates—sometimes as low as 3-4% compared to the market’s 6-7%—allowing them to sell homes at inflated prices while keeping monthly payments competitive. Small builders, unable to access similar financing, must slash prices by 20-30% to compete, a near-impossible feat.

The consolidation began in the 1980s with the savings-and-loan (S&L) crisis. Deregulation allowed S&Ls to chase speculative ventures, leading to mass insolvencies. The Resolution Trust Corporation’s fire sale of S&L assets—real estate, construction loans, and more—to Wall Street firms like private equity funds and REITs starved small builders of credit while empowering large, publicly traded conglomerates. By the late 1990s, mergers and acquisitions became the norm, with firms like Pulte Group aiming for market dominance akin to General Motors in the 1950s. The 2008 Great Financial Crisis accelerated this trend, wiping out smaller builders and funneling $2.4 billion in tax refunds to the largest firms, which doubled down on acquisitions. By 2024, D.R. Horton and Lennar alone controlled over 30% of DFW’s new home closings.

The resale market has also been transformed. After 2008, the federal government’s bulk sales of foreclosed homes enabled institutional investors like Blackstone to buy single-family homes en masse. In 2021, these investors—trusts, corporations, and LLCs—accounted for 34-52% of home purchases in key DFW counties, often paying 1.7 times the median price paid by individuals. This influx, combined with high interest rates locking homeowners into low-rate mortgages, choked the supply of existing homes, driving the median DFW home price from $267,000 in 2020 to over $400,000 by 2022. The result? A housing shortage of over 121,000 units in DFW by 2022, worse than California’s, despite Texas’s relatively lax regulations.

A Nationwide Epidemic

Dallas’s plight is not an outlier—it’s a symptom of a national crisis. Across the United States, home prices have surged 60% over the past decade, adjusted for inflation, while median house prices are now six times median income, up from four to five times two decades ago. Rents have climbed 67% since 2009, with nearly half that increase in the last five years. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 46% of renters are “cost burdened,” spending over 30% of their income on housing, and 23% are “severely cost burdened,” spending over 50%. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 69% of Americans are “very concerned” about housing costs, up from 61% in 2023.

The housing shortage is staggering. Freddie Mac estimated a 3.8 million-unit deficit by 2020, which grew to 4.9 million by 2023, per the Brookings Institution. This shortfall stems from chronic underbuilding since the 2008 crisis, with fewer homes built in the 2010s than any decade since the 1960s. Sun Belt cities like Miami, Phoenix, and Atlanta, once havens of affordability, now mirror the high-cost coastal markets of New York and Los Angeles. For example, Miami’s median home price jumped from $330,000 in 2019 to $550,000 by 2024, while Phoenix saw a 70% price increase since 2015. Even Midwestern cities like Chicago and Milwaukee face shortages, though less severe than coastal or Sun Belt metros.

Corporate consolidation mirrors Dallas’s experience nationwide. The top 200 homebuilders now control a growing share of new home sales, which have dropped 25-50% over the past two decades as concentration increased. Large builders leverage their scale to secure preferential deals with suppliers and subcontractors, squeezing out smaller competitors. In California, just 20 firms accounted for 70.8% of new home sales in 2024, a trend echoed in markets like Atlanta and Phoenix. Posts on X highlight public frustration, with users noting that hedge funds and private equity firms are buying entire developments, turning potential family homes into rentals and driving up prices. One estimate projects that private equity could control 40% of single-family rentals—7.6 million homes—by 2030.

Institutional investors have amplified the crisis. In 2021, investors bought nearly one in four homes sold nationwide, with over 30% in states like Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona. These purchases, often in cash and targeting low-income or minority neighborhoods, crowd out first-time buyers and inflate prices. In Atlanta, investors bought 33% of homes in 2021, while in Phoenix, they accounted for 31%. A 2022 Fannie Mae report noted that these trends exacerbate affordability issues, particularly for low- and moderate-income families, as investors convert homes into rentals, reducing the supply available for purchase.

The Human Toll

The consequences are dire. In cities like Los Angeles and New York, where 25% of renters spend over half their income on housing, homelessness has surged, with over 650,000 Americans unhoused in 2023. Even in less expensive regions like West Virginia, where home prices are 30% below the national average, housing quality issues persist. Young people, renters, and low-income households bear the brunt, with 94 million households unable to afford a $400,000 home—the median price for a new house is $460,000. In Dallas, frustrated residents are turning to RVs and mobile homes as rents and home prices soar. Across the country, “super commuters” driving 90 minutes or more to work are increasingly common in cities like Spokane, Dallas, and Phoenix, as affordable housing vanishes closer to job centers.

The crisis also stifles economic mobility. High housing costs force employers to pay higher wages, diverting resources from innovation and growth. Reduced migration to high-opportunity areas, driven by unaffordable housing, has lowered U.S. economic output and widened income disparities. Racial disparities are stark: Black and Hispanic families face barriers like discriminatory lending and lower access to intergenerational wealth, perpetuating the racial wealth gap. In 2024, the Center for American Progress found that 76% of Americans see housing affordability as a growing problem, with 80% of rural residents and 72% of urban dwellers agreeing.

No Easy Fixes

Commentators like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue that reforming zoning and building codes is key to increasing supply. Cities like Minneapolis and California have eliminated single-family zoning to allow denser housing, but results are slow—existing homes often remain too valuable to replace with multifamily units. While such reforms help small builders by reducing bureaucratic hurdles, they don’t address the financial and competitive disadvantages imposed by corporate giants. In Dallas, lax regulations haven’t prevented a 121,000-unit shortage, suggesting zoning isn’t the primary driver.

The real solution lies in tackling consolidation and financialization. Banning institutional ownership of single-family homes could curb speculative buying, as proposed in posts on X and reports calling for a national commission on the housing crisis. Restructuring the financial sector to prioritize lending to small builders—reversing the post-S&L shift to Wall Street—would level the playing field. Cracking down on anti-competitive practices, like exclusive supplier deals or coordinated production limits facilitated by firms like Residential Strategies, Inc., could spur construction. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that the housing shortage has cost states billions in economic output since 2008, underscoring the urgency of these reforms.

A Call to Reclaim the American Dream

America’s housing crisis is a national phenomenon, rooted in a concentrated and bloated financial sector that empowers monopolistic homebuilders and investors to restrict supply and extract profits. From Dallas to Denver, Miami to Minneapolis, the home—once the bedrock of American life—has become a cash-flowing asset for Wall Street. Since 2022, over a dozen homebuilder billionaires have emerged, their wealth built on soaring prices and rents. To restore affordability, we must prioritize homeowners and local builders over distant financiers. This means banning corporate ownership of single-family homes, reforming finance to support small builders, and dismantling the oligopolistic practices that throttle supply. Zoning reforms can help, but without addressing the housing-finance-industrial complex, they’re a bandage on a broken system. The American Dream depends on it—because a nation of renters is not the nation we aspire to be.