SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Access to affordable housing has been a challenge in California for decades. Year after year, lawmakers introduce bills designed to streamline the construction process and create incentives to produce more homes.

But another area of concern is over the supply of homes that are in the market already. Shortly after the 2008 housing crash, a trend emerged of investment firms buying up single-family homes across the country.

Tracking these firms’ purchases has become a passion project for Ryan Lundquist, an appraiser and housing analyst in Sacramento. 

He runs the Sacramento Appraisal Blog, where he’s tracked down thousands of homes purchased by the company Invitation Homes. 

“They took advantage of extremely low prices, but they’ve been kind of dormant for the last couple of years since the market changed,” Lundquist said.

It’s Lundquist’s work that inspired Assemblymember Alex Lee to introduce Assembly Bill 2584 to put an end to investment firms’ ability to buy up single-family homes.

“They are exasperating and making the housing shortage worse,” Lee said.

Lee’s bill would cap the number of single-family homes large corporations could own at 1,000 units. According to the bill, if a corporation goes over this allotment, they would be forced to sell the property and would be fined $100,000 for each violation.

According to the California State Library, Invitation Homes owns 11,807 homes across California. If AB 2584 passes, the company could keep the properties they already own, but would be prohibited from purchasing any additional properties.

There are currently only five companies that own over 1,000 properties in the state.

“This is a bill that’s needed to make sure the problem doesn’t get worse and at the same time making sure that we have enough homeownership opportunities for hard-working Californians,” Lee adds. 

Invitation Homes declined to comment for this story, but referred us to David Howard, the CEO of National Rental Home Council.

Opponents of AB 2584, like Howard, call the bill a distraction from the root issue of California’s housing shortage: supply.

“Policymakers should be focused almost exclusively when it comes to housing on ways to encourage and incentivize more housing development and more investment. Legislation, like Assemblyman Lee’s, [does] nothing but bottleneck and choke off additional sources of capital,” Howard said.

Data from the California Research Bureau shows less than 2% of single-family homes are owned by investors with over 10 properties.

“Affordability is not a new issue so we can’t just pin it on just corporate investors, but the question becomes — if we ignore big institutional investors — what do our neighborhoods look like in 50 to 100 years?” Lundquist said.

AB 2584 is in the early stages of the legislative process. It will have its first committee hearing when lawmakers return to Sacramento from Spring recess.