Blackstone to offer loans to help build 50,000 US homes a year

Blackstone Inc., one of the largest institutional owners of single-family homes in the US, is launching a new lending platform for homebuilders.

The venture, supported by Blackstone affiliate Brio Homebuilder Solutions, aims to help build more than 50,000 homes annually so they can be sold to the public, the investment giant said in a statement Monday. The platform will also partner with other parties. 

Blackstone is looking to stoke more construction amid heightened public frustration over the scarcity and high cost of housing, which has drawn attention to the firm's own vast holdings of homes. Its statement noted that fewer homes are now built in the US than in 1960, despite a doubling of the country's population since then.

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"We have to make the American dream more accessible," Blackstone President Jon Gray told an audience at the Milken Institute Global Conference last week as he pointed to the housing shortage. "The goal is for people to be able to afford homes and for new homes to be built."

The company's stock took a hit in January after President Donald Trump vowed to stop institutional investors from buying more single-family homes — a ban that hasn't yet been fully codified by policymakers.

Blackstone, for its part, has argued that higher home prices in the US are due to a shortage of supply, with its data showing institutions own only about 0.5% of all single-family homes in the US.

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In March, Trump signed two executive orders aimed at improving housing affordability by encouraging mortgage lending and easing environmental rules that can slow projects. In April, a report from White House economists asserted that the US is facing a shortfall of at least 10 million single-family homes. 

Blackstone is a major investor in residential real estate through a variety of channels. In 2021, it bought Home Partners of America in a $6 billion deal that added 17,000 rentals to its holdings. It bought another single-family rental company, Tricon Residential, three years later.

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April Housing, its affordable housing portfolio company, is on track to be the largest preserver of homes this year, touting $300 million of investments in its communities.

Builder finance has been attracting capital from alternative asset managers such as Apollo Global Management and Brookfield Asset Management. Last year Apollo launched Olympus Housing Capital to provide builders with money to buy land and prepare it for vertical construction. That year, housing giant Pretium raised $500 million of equity to lend money to home flippers, traditional builders and land development companies.