Nearly 50% of renters spend more than 30% of income on housing. Corporate landlords are projected to own 40% of single-family rentals by 2030. And the real estate lobby is the top spender in Washington.

WASHINGTON: Nearly half of all renter households in America are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on rent, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. The national median rent: $1,487 per month, per the Census Bureau's latest American Community Survey. The average exceeds $1,700.

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Institutional investors are projected to own 40% of all single-family rental homes by 2030. Corporations already own nearly 9% of all residential land in the United States. In Sun Belt markets, institutional buyers are purchasing 25-30% of homes sold.

The National Association of Realtors was the single top-spending lobbying organization in America in 2024, at $86.3 million. In California, the real estate industry spent over $150 million across three ballot measure cycles to defeat rent control propositions. The National Apartment Association's 2025 Federal Advocacy Outlook lists the federal rent control proposal among the items it is working against, while framing its agenda as being about "housing affordability."

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1. 49% cost-burdened: In 2024, 22.7 million renter households, 49% of all renters, spent more than 30% of income on rent and utilities, a record. Source: Harvard JCHS, "America's Rental Housing 2026," March 2026; median gross rent $1,487 per Census Bureau, ACS 2024 1-year estimates, September 2025.

2. 40% by 2030: MetLife Investment Management projects institutions will own roughly 7.6 million single-family rentals, 40% of the national stock, by 2030, up from about 5% today. Source: Multifamily Dive on the MetLife IM report, 2022.

3. $150 million: What the California real estate industry spent across three ballot cycles to defeat rent control; the California Apartment Association alone reported $226 million to the Secretary of State since 2018. NAR was the top lobbying spender in America in 2024 at $86.3 million. Source: LA Public Press, October 2024; Real Estate News citing OpenSecrets, February 2025.

The landlord lobby does not call it rent extraction. They call it "housing affordability advocacy."

Read that again. The National Apartment Association, funded by corporate landlords, lobbies against rent control under the banner of affordability. They spent $150 million to make sure California could not cap rents, then issued a press release about their commitment to affordable housing.

This is not a housing market. It is a wealth transfer machine. Families pay more every month. Corporations buy more homes every quarter. The lobby blocks every reform every session. And the cycle continues because the people who profit from it are the people who fund the campaigns of the people who could stop it.

— Michael Starr Hopkins · Washington, D.C.

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