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UNION CITY, Mich. (AP) — Authorities searched through rubble and debris in southern Michigan on Saturday after suspected tornadoes tore through the region and killed four people, including a 12-year-old boy, during powerful storms also blamed for two deaths in eastern Oklahoma.

First responders from multiple agencies in the Union Lake area near Union City looked for more possible victims and worked to clear roads, authorities said. Photos and videos posted on social media showed flattened homes and downed trees in a lakeside neighborhood.

The National Weather Service said an initial assessment confirmed that an EF3 tornado with winds of at least 150 mph (241 kph) struck the Union Lake area Friday.

The weather service also reported seven preliminary tornado tracks in eastern Oklahoma that same day, according to the state’s emergency operations center.

The threat of severe weather continued Saturday in the nation’s midsection, with tornado watches posted in the afternoon for eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia and western Pennsylvania and New York.

Severe thunderstorms that began in northern Indiana appeared to spawn multiple tornadoes in southern Michigan the previous day, said meteorologist Lonnie Fisher of the National Weather Service, which sent teams to the region to evaluate the damage and confirm tornadoes.

“Mostly likely there were three distinct tornadoes, but we won’t know 100% for sure until they finish the survey,” Fisher said, adding that the storms intensified rapidly in southern Michigan after hitting northern Indiana.

Three people were killed and 12 were injured in the Union Lake area, according to the Branch County Sheriff’s Office. It was the second tornado to hit Union City in two years. An EF1 tornado with 95 mph (153 kph) winds touched down briefly in May 2024 and destroyed a machine shed.

Lisa Piper stood on her back deck and took video of a terrifying scene that played out on the other side of frozen Union Lake as a funnel cloud formed and then dropped toward the ground Friday. Trees were torn from their roots, and debris flew into the air.

“It’s lifting houses!” she said. As the devastation continued, she exclaimed: “Oh my heart is pounding. Oh, I hope they’re OK.”

Dan Taylor raced home to Union City from his cleaning job at a nearby hospital that day to find his brother and two dogs safe. But a tree fell on his home of 20 years, and portions of the roof of a house across the street blew into his yard.

“I didn’t know what to say. I was lost for words,” he said Saturday. “I’m just thankful that my brother’s all right, my dogs, because it could have turned bad. We’re not guaranteed of anything.”

About 50 miles (81 kilometers) southwest of Union Lake, a 12-year-old boy died and several other people were injured during a possible tornado, the Cass County Sheriff’s Office said. Sheriff Clint Roach said in a Facebook post that Silas Anderson’s parents found him injured and provided first aid, but he later died at a hospital.

Disaster relief workers went door to door in the Union City and Three Rivers areas to offer meals and cleanup supplies. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said she would declare a state of emergency in Branch, Cass and St. Joseph counties.

In Beggs, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a tornado was blamed for the deaths of two people in a house on Friday, the Okmulgee County Sheriff’s Office said. Two others were taken to a hospital.

The tornado cut a roughly 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) path of damage in Okmulgee County including Beggs, said Jeff Moore, the county’s emergency manager. Large trees toppled and power outages were reported.

Suspected tornadoes also were reported in northern parts of Tulsa, where a building at the Tulsa Tech Peoria campus was damaged.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt declared a state of emergency in several counties to free up support and resources.

The Oklahoma deaths came a day after storms killed a 47-year-old woman and her 13-year-old daughter in their vehicle in Fairview, in the western part of the state.

The spring storms come near the start of what many call tornado season, which generally begins at various times in different parts of the U.S. Experts recommend a few simple safety steps to take before tornadoes hit, including having a weather radio and a plan for where to take shelter.

In parts of the South, the weather pattern was expected to usher in extremely warm temperatures for this time of year by the weekend.

NEW YORK (AP) — Ford has issued two recalls affecting nearly 1.74 million of its cars in the U.S., due to software issues that impact the vehicles’ rearview camera displays.

According to notices published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week, an internal component inside the infotainment system of certain 2021-2026 Ford Broncos and 2021-2024 Ford Edges may overheat and shut down — preventing the rearview image from displaying when drivers are going in reverse. Meanwhile, some 2020-2022 Ford Escapes and Lincoln Corsairs, as well as 2020-2024 Lincoln Aviators and Explorers, may show a flipped or inverted rearview image.

The recalls cover 849,310 Broncos and Edges as well as 889,950 Escapes, Corsairs, Aviators and Explorers. Ford estimates that all of these vehicles have the defects. But the company is not aware of any injuries or accidents spanning from either recall, NHTSA documents show.

Still, the NHTSA is warning drivers that both issues could increase crash risks.

For impacted Bronco and Edge owners, Ford is offering a free software update for the vehicles’ Accessory Protocol Interface Module (APIM). Owner-notification letters will be mailed out at the end of the month, with the fix available either at a dealer or through an “over-the-air” update.

But a remedy is still under development for the recall impacting the Escapes, Corsairs, Aviators and Explorers, this week’s recall announcement noted. In the meantime, interim letters to notify owners of the safety risks are set to be mailed out in the coming months.

The Associated Press reached out to Michigan-based Ford for further comments on Saturday.

For more information, drivers can visit the NHTSA website and Ford’s online recall lookup using their vehicle’s VIN number, or call the company’s customer service line at 1-866-436-7332.

NEW YORK (AP) — The price of oil surged higher and showed no signs of halting its rapid climb a week after the U.S. and Israel launched major attacks on Iran that escalated into a war in the Middle East.

The conflict, in which nearly every country in the Middle East has sustained damage from missiles or drone strikes, has left ships that carry roughly 20 million barrels of oil a day stranded in the Persian Gulf, unable to safely pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Gulf that is bordered on its north side by Iran.

The shipping disruption and damage to key Middle East oil and gas facilities has interrupted supplies from some of the world’s largest oil producers. Kuwait, for example, said on Saturday that it would reduce its oil production as a “precautionary” measure due to the war, which could jolt global energy markets even further.

Oil prices surpassed $90 a barrel Friday, with American crude settling at $90.90, up 36% from a week ago, and Brent, the international standard, climbing 27% over the course of the week to land at $92.69.

The fallout is ratcheting up what consumers and business will pay for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, with some drivers already feeling it at the pump.

“It’s crazy. It’s not needed, especially at a time when people are already struggling, but not unexpected from all this turmoil that’s going on,” said Mark Doran, who was pumping gas in Middlebury, Vermont Friday. “I don’t think there’s been an end in sight to any Middle East conflict that’s been started by us, so the fact that they say that there’s going to be an end that quickly is not believable, and the Middle East is, you know, a place that the U.S. is not going to solve.”

President Donald Trump said Monday that the U.S. expected its military operations against Iran to last four to five weeks but has “ the capability to go far longer.” On Friday, Trump appeared to rule out talks with Iran absent its “unconditional surrender.”

“The more news we get, the more it seems like this is going to last a really long time,” said Al Salazar, head of macro oil and gas research at Enverus.

In the U.S., a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $3.41 on Saturday, up about 43 cents from a week ago, according to AAA motor club. Diesel was selling for $4.51 a gallon Saturday, up about 75 cents from last week.

The price shocks were felt even more heavily in Europe and Asia, markets that rely more heavily on energy supplies from the Middle East. Diesel prices doubled in Europe, and jet fuel prices rose by close to 200% in Asia, according to Claudio Galimberti, chief economist at Rystad Energy.

Energy prices climbed throughout the week as Iran launched a series of retaliatory attacks, including a drone strike on the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, and the conflict widened. Iran also hit a major refinery in Saudi Arabia and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Qatar, halting flows of refined products and taking about 20% of the world’s LNG supply offline.

“We keep seeing news of vessels being hit or refineries or pipelines, so the list is very long,” Galimberti said. As a result, roughly 9 million barrels of oil per day are off the market because of facilities being hit or producers taking precautionary measures, he said. “Right now, with all of this shut in, we are in a situation of extreme deficit.”

The U.S. is a net exporter of oil, but that does not mean it is immune to increases in the price of oil or gasoline, or that its producers can just make up the difference.

Oil is traded on global markets, so even the oil produced in the U.S. has risen in price based on what’s happening in the Middle East. And for many American oil producers, “if you put more wells in the ground, there’s about a six-month lag before you get that production uplift,” Salazar said.

In addition, the U.S. can’t simply turn all of its crude oil into gasoline. That’s because most of the oil produced in the U.S. is light, sweet crude, and refineries on the East and West coasts are primarily designed to process heavier, sour crude. As a result, the U.S. exports some of its crude oil and imports some refined products such as gasoline.

Jerry Dalpiaz of Covington, Louisiana, said he started filling up his cars and gas cans on “the day that they announced that the United States has started military operations against Iran” because he assumed gas prices would climb.

“I can weather the storm because I’m in good financial position, but I feel sorry for my fellow citizens who are living paycheck to paycheck because they have to drive to get to work and they have to change their oil and all those things,” Dalpiaz said. “And they need some relief and it doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon.”

Trump issued a plan Friday to insure losses up to approximately $20 billion in the Gulf region, aiming to restore confidence in maritime trade, help stabilize international commerce and support American and allied businesses operating in the Middle East.

But some energy experts said extra insurance won’t solve the problem.

“The problem is that in the oil trading, oil shipping world, people are worried about counterterrorism,” said Amy Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University, adding that they’re worried about automated drone speedboats, weapon-carrying, flying drones and mines or other devices. “In order for the United States to create the atmosphere that undoes the current bottleneck at the Strait of Hormuz, there has to be some credible demonstration of solutions to the counter-terrorism problem.”

Salazar wondered what the “new normal” would look like if the Strait of Hormuz was effectively re-opened, and what effective security would look like.

“All it takes is one individual with a RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) to stand on the shore and take out a tanker, right?” Salazar said. “And this is forever, do you know what I mean?”

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil shot to its highest price since 2023 after surging again Friday because of the Iran war, and a weak update on the U.S. job market knocked stocks lower to cap Wall Street’s worst week since October.

The S&P 500 dropped 1.3% after a report showed U.S. employers cut more jobs last month than they created and after oil prices spiked above $90 per barrel. The combination of a weak economy and high inflation is a worst-case scenario for investors because the Federal Reserve has no good tool to fix both problems at the same time.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged as many as 945 points before finishing with a loss of 453, or 0.9%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.6%.

“You can’t sugarcoat this report,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management. “A negative payrolls number combined with a big jump in oil prices will have traders worrying about stagflation risks.”

Stagflation is what economists call the miserable mix of a stagnating economy with high inflation, and a separate report released Friday added to the sourness after showing that U.S. retailers made less money in January than economists expected. It raised the disconcerting possibility that spending by U.S. households, the main engine of the economy, may be stretched near its maximum.

Usually when the economy is unsteady and the job market is weakening, the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates to give things a boost. Lower rates can make it easier for households to get mortgages and for companies to raise money to expand, while also lifting prices for stocks and other investments. The Fed cut its main interest rate several times last year and had indicated more were to come this year.

But lower interest rates can also make inflation worse. And the Fed’s hands may be increasingly tied because spiking oil prices are pushing inflation higher due to disruptions for the energy industry.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, leaped another 8.5% to settle at $92.69. It briefly rose above $94 to touch its highest level since September 2023.

A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude breached the $90 level for the first time since 2023 and jumped 12.2% to $90.90.

Oil prices have surged, with Brent up from near $70 late last week, as the war has expanded and included areas critical to the production and movement of oil and gas in the Middle East. Much will depend on what happens with the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s coast, where roughly a fifth of the world’s oil typically sails.

The U.S. government gave details Friday about a plan President Donald Trump announced earlier to offer insurance to ships crossing the strait, but it had little effect on the market.

If oil prices spike further, like to $100 per barrel, and stay there, some analysts and investors say it could be too much for the global economy to withstand.

To be sure, the U.S. stock market has a history of bouncing back relatively quickly following conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, as long as oil prices don’t jump too high for too long. Uncertainty about just how high oil prices will go this time around and for how long caused frenetic swings across financial markets this past week, sometimes hour by hour.

On Monday, the S&P 500 tumbled to an immediate 1.2% loss at the start of trading but made it all back and ended the day with a tiny gain.

Trump’s most recent signal on the war was that he wants an “unconditional surrender” of Iran, apparently ruling out negotiations.

In the bond market, Treasury yields wavered, with higher oil prices pushing upward on them and the discouraging updates on the U.S. economy pulling downward.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury initially rose toward 4.19% before pulling back to 4.14%. That’s up from 4.13% late Thursday and just 3.97% a week earlier.

Smaller companies often feel the bite of high borrowing costs more because many need to borrow to grow. Smaller companies can also be more dependent on the strength of the U.S. economy for their profits than big multinational rivals, and the smallest stocks on Wall Street took Friday’s sharpest dives.

The Russell 2000 index of small stocks fell a market-leading 2.3%.

Among the big companies in the S&P 500, companies with high fuel bills helped lead the way lower. Old Dominion Freight Line sank 7.9%, cruise line Carnival fell 5% and Southwest Airlines lost 5.3%.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 90.69 points to 6,740.02. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 453.19 to 47,501.55, and the Nasdaq composite sank 361.31 to 22,387.68.

In stock markets abroad, indexes slumped in Europe following a better finish in Asia. London’s FTSE 100 fell 1.2%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 1.7%.

South Korea’s Kospi was nearly unchanged after plunging 12.1% Wednesday for its worst loss in history and then rebounding 9.6% Thursday.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A private jet that crashed in Maine in January, killing all six people aboard, remained on the ground 8 minutes longer than it should have after receiving a deicing treatment in a snowstorm, according to a preliminary report issued Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The plane should have waited no more than 9 minutes from the start of when the deicing treatment began before taking off in those cold and snowy conditions, according to Federal Aviation Administration guidelines. But the NTSB report said 17 minutes passed before takeoff.

The cockpit voice recorder captured the pilot commenting that it was “standard” to have 14 to 18 minutes and that if the wait was more than 30 minutes, they would return to the ramp to have the plane retreated, and the copilot concurred, the report states. Aviation safety consultant John Cox said that comment “makes me wonder if they actually ran the time” because the guidelines make it clear they didn’t have that much time.

The report does not identify the cause of the crash, which won’t come until the final report is done sometime next year. But aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti, who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and FAA, said the preliminary report “removes some of the mystery of what happened here.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that the loss of control at liftoff — which was accompanied with an aerodynamic stall warning and sudden right bank — was likely due to snow and ice contamination on the right wing,” Guzzetti said.

He said the pilots’ comments about how long they could wait before getting a second deicing treatment raises questions about how much experience the Texas-based crew had with flying in cold weather. The NTSB will examine that as well as the procedures the airport used in the deicing process, the quality of the chemicals applied and every other factor that could have contributed to the crash.

Deicing guidelines designed to keep planes safe

The FAA guidelines on how long a plane can wait before taking off are an estimate of how long the deicing treatment will keep the wings free of ice, which is crucial to allowing it to fly. Regulations dictate that pilots should never take off with ice on their wings because countless crashes have been caused by ice buildup.

The deicing process includes treating a plane with two different chemicals. The first one is designed to remove any ice from the plane. The second chemical helps prevent ice from accumulating again. The FAA calculates the recommended holdover time from the start of the application of the second anti-icing chemical, which happened at 7:27 p.m. before this crash. The plane didn’t try to take off until 7:44 p.m.

The plane actually sat at the deicing pad for almost five minutes after it was treated while it restarted its engines. And even after it reached the runway it sat for almost four more minutes before the pilots told the tower they were ready to takeoff.

“We know this much. The airplane exceeded the holdover time chart,” said Cox, who is the CEO of Safety Operating Systems and a former airline pilot

A snowy stopover on the way to Europe

The luxury Bombardier Challenger 600 jet that was owned by a Texas law firm had stopped in Bangor to refuel en route to Paris amid light snow, mild winds and near-zero temperatures as a massive storm began to reach Bangor. Another plane had just aborted takeoff, radioing to the tower that they chose not to fly because visibility wasn’t great and they would need another application of deicing fluid.

The snow would eventually accumulate to about 9.5 inches, but it was only beginning at the time of the crash. Investigators, who were initially hampered by the extreme weather conditions, recovered the cockpit voice and data recorders for analysis.

After it crashed, the plane landed upside down on the runway and burst into flames. The airport remained closed for several days afterward.

“There were multiple airport CCTV cameras that captured the airplane during the takeoff,” the report states. “Several of these cameras showed the airplane impact the ground followed by multiple explosions as the impact sequence progressed.”

Two previous icing crashes involving this plane model

More than two decades ago there were two other fatal crashes involving ice buildup on a Bombardier Challenger 600 like this one in Birmingham, England; and Montrose, Colorado. There have been several other incidents involving this plane model where icing contributed to an unexpected roll on takeoff in cold weather but pilots were able to recover in those cases.

The FAA published new rules afterward to make clear to pilots and airports that even a small amount of frost on the wings can be a problem. The agency also clarified the standards for deicing to make certain that all frozen particles are removed from the wings, and it required a combination of tactile and visual inspections.

Bombardier was also required to add a cold weather operations warning to the plane’s flight manual, but more than 1,000 of these Challenger 600s have been delivered, and the plane maker said they are designed to be safe.

The four passengers and two pilots had stopped to refuel in Bangor as they traveled from Houston to France on Jan. 25. The passengers included Houston lawyer Tara Arnold, 46, and three people who worked for her luxury travel company.

The other victims were event planner Shawna Collins, 53, of Houston; chef Nick Mastrascusa, 43, and sommelier Shelby Kuyawa, 34, both of Hawaii; and pilots Jacob Hosmer, 47, of Pearland, Texas, and Jorden Reidel, 33, of Texas.

The international airport in Bangor, about 235 miles north of Boston and 130 miles north of Portland, is one of the closest in the U.S. to Europe and is often used to refuel private jets flying overseas. The Bombardier was headed for the Champagne region of France when it crashed.

AUSTIN (AP) — The abrupt decision by U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales to not seek reelection clears the path for a self-described gun rights “absolutist” to secure the Republican nomination in a sprawling Texas congressional district.

Brendan Herrera, 30, originally gained notoriety by posting videos of himself shooting weapons, calling himself “The AK Guy.” He lost a close contest to Gonzales two years ago but forced him into a runoff in Tuesday’s primary.

Gonzales dropped out of the race on Thursday night after having admitted to an affair with a former staff member who later died by suicide, meaning Herrera suddenly has no competition for the Republican mantle in the state’s 23rd congressional district. Democrats hope to pull off an upset by casting Herrera as a fringe figure from the hard right, but it will be a challenge in a deep red district that stretches 800 miles along the border with Mexico.

“I appreciate Tony Gonzales for making the appropriate decision,” Herrera said in a statement. “I look forward to being the voice of TX23 that our district deserves.”

Herrera moved to Texas from North Carolina in 2020, and he built a following of millions with YouTube videos about guns that he tested on a shooting range. He describes himself as a “Second Amendment Absolutist” and he sharply criticized Gonzales’ support for gun safety legislation after the Robb Elementary school shooting in Uvalde, which is in the district.

He has also faced criticism for comments about the Holocaust. In a 2022 video, Herrera described a German submachine gun as “the original ghetto blaster,” and he goose-stepped to German songs.

While firing the weapon at a can of White Claw, another man wearing a mask asks Herrera if he is “hiding any White Claw underneath the floorboards?”

Herrera says yes and then shouts, “Gestapo right there!” before shooting a case of drinks. Then he adds, “they did not see that coming,” pronouncing “not see” like “Nazi.”

Later in the video, Herrera said, “I’m not really a big fan of fascism,” and said he was making jokes about history.

The Democratic nominee for the district, attorney and former schoolteacher Katy Padilla Stout, swiftly criticized Herrera over that particular video on Friday morning.

“Parents I talk to in #TX23, particularly those in Uvalde, are disgusted that this man could represent our families in Congress,” Padilla Stout posted on social media.

Yet Republicans have no fear of losing the district, and dismiss Democratic hopes of snatching the seat with Herrera as the nominee.

“Texas’ 23rd District is deep red, and Democrats know it,” said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Christian Martinez. “While they talk a big game in Washington, they don’t even have a credible recruit and are too busy defending their own vulnerable members across Texas to compete here.”

Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist in Texas, said his party has to decide whether Herrera is worth the “headache” during a difficult midterm election cycle.

The party wants to feel like the district is “in the bag and off the board,” he said, but “it probably won’t be.”

“They’re going to take a look at this one,” Steinhauser said. “Does it hurt the Republican Party to support this particular candidate?”

The district is the second-largest in the country and was one of Congress’ perennial battlegrounds before it was redrawn in 2021. It was a Republican stronghold in 2024 when President Donald Trump carried the district by nearly 15 points.

Trump had previously endorsed Gonzales. Last month, a lawyer representing the president sent Herrera’s campaign a “cease and desist” letter accusing it of sending deceptive mailers with Trump’s image.

But support for Gonzales began to evaporate during the scandal over his affair and the woman’s subsequent suicide, and House Republican leadership urged him to end his campaign.

However, Gonzales said he would serve out his current term, helping his party maintain its slim majority in the House.

HOUSTON (AP) – In 2020, Raysall Wiggins decided she no longer wanted to rent a home in the Houston neighborhood where she grew up. She wanted to buy.

“I wanted to have something of my own, something that I could eventually pass down to my children,” said Wiggins, who has two teenage sons. “My parents never had that, and I wanted something different for my own children.”

Wiggins, who works in health care, put in multiple offers on homes in Houston’s Acres Home neighborhood. But more times than not, she was beaten not by another family, but by an investor or company, her real estate agent said.

“It’s devastating to continuously go through the same thing, for a person to constantly be told, ‘no’ or ‘we didn’t get it,’” Wiggins said. “It’s a complete letdown.”

President Donald Trump highlighted Wiggins’ story as he pressed lawmakers at his State of the Union address to bar so-called institutional investors, large corporations that buy homes, as well as investors big and small, from purchasing single-family homes.

Trump blamed investors for “stealing away her American Dream.”

Homeownership is viewed as the most accessible way for Americans to build wealth. By that measure, the idea of corporations owning homes is offensive to Americans, said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, an online real estate brokerage. Going after them carries populist appeal.

But, she and other housing economists said, such a prohibition does not attack the root of the nation’s housing problems.

“Declaring a ban on institutional investors works as a political talking point,” Fairweather said. “It works in terms of it emotionally resonating with people who understand the problem but don’t necessarily understand what the right solution is. The real solution, which is to build more homes in the places that people most want to live, is much harder for the President to achieve.”

Republicans, including Trump, and Democrats, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have sought to cast blame on Wall Street and other kinds of investors driving up home prices and making it too hard for would-be first-time homebuyers out of the market.

They’ve sought ways to give first-time homebuyers a leg up in the housing market. Trump signed an executive order in January aimed at discouraging federal agencies from facilitating sales of homes to large institutional investors. Trump called on Congress during his State of the Union address to make that ban permanent. Senators are expected to vote on a bill this month that would limit firms from owning more than 350 single-family homes.

Texas officials, too, have shown an appetite — including Gov. Greg Abbott and state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, an Austin Democrat challenging Abbott in this year’s gubernatorial race — to curb investors from buying up too many homes.

Kicking Wall Street out of the housing market, housing economists argue, wouldn’t blunt the country’s affordability problems — and could make the problem worse.

For one, estimates show large institutional investors own only a small percentage of the nation’s stock of single-family homes — between 1% and 3%. Investors have pulled back considerably since the height of their activity during the pandemic and are now selling more homes than they buy. Those homes aren’t just sitting there — they’re rented to tenants who may not be able to afford to purchase them.

“When you ban institutional investors, you’re potentially banning the people who might not otherwise have access to local schools in single-family neighborhoods or other amenities in those neighborhoods,” Fairweather said. “That reinforces income segregation and racial segregation.”

The primary driver of the nation’s high housing costs, experts have argued, is a deep shortage of homes to buy or rent. By various tallies, the nation is short millions of housing units. Texas, in particular, needs 319,500 homes of all kinds, according to one oft-cited estimate. Banning institutional investors from buying homes, or at least making it more difficult for them to do so, would do nothing to create more homes.

“If you stop them from buying, will it result in more housing construction? No,” said Edward Pinto, co-director of the AEI Housing Center at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Low rates led to rush of investors

Institutional homebuying took off during the COVID-19 pandemic as low-interest rates and high housing demand made owning a home an attractive investment. At one point, they bought one in nearly every 10 homes sold nationwide, according to figures provided by ATTOM Data Solutions, which tracks property transactions and real estate data.

Investors bought even more homes in Texas during the same period. Institutional investors bought 68,482 homes across the state in 2021, or 14.2% of all homes sold in Texas that year, ATTOM figures show. ATTOM defines institutional investor purchases as “residential property sales to non-lending entities that purchased at least 10 properties in a calendar year.” In 2019, such investors bought 26,735 — some 7% of homes sold in Texas that year.

The Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin regions emerged as particular hot spots for investor homebuying in 2021 and 2022.

Institutional buyers significantly ramped up their presence in the Houston region’s home-buying market just as Wiggins began her hunt for a home. In 2019, institutional investors bought fewer than 4,500 homes in the Houston area, ATTOM data show, some 5.3% of all homes sold there that year. Two years later, they bought more than 15,000 — and accounted for more than 13% of sales.

With that influx came a flurry of anecdotes of would-be homebuyers getting outbid by one corporation or another.

Kim Gartner, a Fort Worth real estate agent, said it was common during the pandemic for investors of all sizes to beat out her clients for homes. Often, corporate buyers, she said. Some buyers stuck it out, putting in offers on multiple homes before finally securing one, Gartner said. Others gave up.

“They got frustrated and didn’t feel like they could compete, so they just kind of decided to hold off,” said Gartner, who is secretary and treasurer at the Greater Fort Worth Realtors Association.

There’s no agreed-upon definition of what constitutes an institutional investor. A corporation that buys a single-family home could be a major company that owns tens of thousands of homes or a mom-and-pop landlord that owns one or two homes.

Whatever their size, investors own very few of the state’s single-family housing stock, estimates show.

Less than 1% of Texas’ single-family housing stock is owned by corporations that own 100 units or more as of June 2025, according to estimates from the American Enterprise Institute. Smaller landlords who own between two and nine properties own about 13.2% of the state’s single-family homes, while owners with 10 to 99 homes hold about 1.8% of the stock.

It’s not clear whether institutional investors ultimately have any effect on home prices, housing policy wonks said.

A home renovated by an institutional investor will likely rent for more than it did before that investor bought it, said Daniel Oney, research director at the Texas Real Estate Research Center. But he said he hasn’t seen convincing evidence that investors have driven the state’s housing prices upward.

“We see a role for (institutional investors), and regulating them may not actually have that big of an impact on home prices,” Oney said.

But tales of would-be buyers’ struggles to purchase a home when matched against a Goliath investor have garnered sympathy from Texas lawmakers, who in 2023 sent a bill to Abbott’s desk compelling the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University to keep track of institutional buyers’ activity in the state’s housing market.

Abbott vetoed the bill among a slew of bills he vetoed to try to force Republican legislators at the time to reach a deal to cut property taxes.

The following year, he called on state lawmakers to rein in Wall Street homebuying when they convened in 2025.

“I strongly support free markets,” Abbott wrote in a post on X. “But this corporate large-scale buying of residential homes seems to be distorting the market and making it harder for the average Texan to purchase a home.”

Lawmakers left Austin last year without touching the matter. Hinojosa, who has pushed bills targeting investors, reintroduced a similar measure to track investor activity as well as one to prevent them from buying a home for at least 30 days after it first hit the market. Neither went anywhere.

“Making housing affordable in Texas starts with holding private equity and institutional buyers accountable,” Hinojosa wrote in a Facebook post in December. “As governor, I will do just that — make it easier for working Texans to buy a home.

An Abbott representative did not directly answer questions about the governor’s stance on banning institutional investors, referring a reporter to his past comments. Hinojosa’s campaign did not return requests for comment.

A slight edge

The U.S. Senate this week advanced a bill aimed at easing the nation’s housing affordability crunch. Within that bill is a provision banning large investors from owning more than 350 single-family homes. That doesn’t count homes in build-to-rent developments, subdivisions of single-family homes intended for tenants.

The bill includes a provision that requires companies to sell those build-to-rent homes within seven years, Bloomberg News reported. Builders and a coalition of housing advocates, including the group Dallas Neighbors for Housing, have called on lawmakers to strike that language from the bill.

Would-be homebuyers might gain a slight competitive edge should officials pass laws to force those homes back onto the for-sale market, some experts acknowledged, because supply would be increased. But that injection of supply wouldn’t be big enough to put a real dent in home prices, they argue. What’s more is that supply infusion in the for-sale market would bite into the country’s rental supply, which plays a role in the country’s overall housing ecosystem. Rents could go up as a result.

Depending on the scope of whatever law gets passed, an institutional investor may wind up selling their home to a smaller investor, not a homebuyer who wants to live there, housing experts noted.

Instead of targeting Wall Street, housing experts said officials should focus on ways to allow more homes to be built like speeding up local permitting processes, allowing smaller homes on smaller lots and a wider array of housing types like duplexes, townhomes and smaller apartment buildings in places that now only allow single-family homes. Housing advocates are fond of noting that firms with a large portfolio of single-family homes have said that they’re less profitable in places that allow more homes to be built.

The power to enact those kinds of changes largely rests with states and cities, not the federal government — and those kinds of changes often face pushback from existing homeowners. But policymakers at the federal level could pass measures encouraging states and local governments to allow more homes to be built, housing experts said.

Texas lawmakers enacted several measures, which Abbott signed and Hinojosa voted for, to boost the state’s housing supply last year like allowing smaller homes on smaller lots in some places and apartments in commercial areas in the state’s biggest cities. Austin officials, too, have relaxed a slew of local regulations in recent years to allow more homes to be built, but few other major Texas cities have.

There are additional solutions.

When Wiggins finally purchased her home in 2023, she bought it through the Harris County Community Land Trust, which uses a method housing advocates have touted to help lower-income families secure affordable homeownership. Under the program, Wiggins owns the house but the trust owns the land underneath, which lowers the overall cost of the home — an arrangement Wiggins said she has mixed feelings about. But the setup allows her to build equity and pass the home down to her kids, Wiggins said.

“It was another way of still obtaining the dream,” Wiggins said.

BOCA CHICA BEACH (AP) – The Texas Supreme Court pondered how far the state can go in limiting access to a public beach during oral arguments Thursday in a case involving the closure of Boca Chica Beach for SpaceX’s rocket launches.

Rio Grande Valley environmentalist and indigenous groups are suing the Texas General Land Office and Cameron County over a law, passed in 2013, that allows some counties to temporarily close a beach for space flight activities.

The lawsuit is among multiple waged over the years between local advocates and SpaceX as the space exploration company has continued to expand its physical footprint and the frequency of its rocket launches in South Texas. Both, activists argue, have caused harm to the local environment and impeded the public’s ability to access a beach that has to be closed off for safety when SpaceX is conducting its test launches.

Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration authorized SpaceX to launch rockets up to 25 times per year, up from the five times per year the company was previously allowed. The launches cause a closure of the roughly 8-mile long beach that lies adjacent to the SpaceX launch pad.

Attorneys representing the groups — Save RGV, the Sierra Club and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas — centered on the Open Beaches Amendment to the Texas Constitution that grants the public an unrestricted right to use public beaches.

The state, however, argued that the amendment did not guarantee every person access to every Gulf Coast beach at all times.

“It is a more limited right,” said Beth Klusmann, deputy solicitor general for the Texas Attorney General’s Office. “The question, of course, then is what are those limits.”

Klusmann argued that all property is subject to Texas’ valid exercise of police power and that the 2013 law — Texas House Bill 2623 — fell within that power because it is meant to protect people during rocket launches and furthers the state’s interest in the space industry.

The justices questioned Klusmann on what would constitute the state going too far in restricting access to the beach, to which she replied that a blanket elimination of access to the beach would be a violation of the Constitution.

Justice Evan A. Young asked if the state would be going too far if SpaceX launches necessitated a closure of the beach for 365 days out of the year.

“I think 365 days probably would exceed the police power in this case given the obvious interest of the people in enacting this amendment and putting it in the Constitution, but we’re nowhere near 365 days,” Klusmann said.

The court also asked why the use of “unrestricted right” in the Open Beaches Amendment, when it comes to the public’s access to the beach, should not be considered as a limit on Texas’ police power. Klusmann pointed to a previous court opinion that stated that unrestricted use of property did not mean it was not subject to the police power.

“I could give someone the unrestricted use of my backyard but the cities can still come in and say you can’t put a gas station there,” she said.

Attorney Marisa Perales, who represented the environmentalist and indigenous groups, was asked by the justices why this use of police power, through HB 2623, was invalid in her clients’ eyes.

Perales said the purpose of the Open Beaches Amendment was to provide an unrestricted right of access to the beach, though she acknowledged there are some limits.

“Where’s that line?” Justice Debra H. Lehrmann asked.

Perales couldn’t specify where that line would be, but said the restrictions set by the state through HB 2623 should not be allowed because the beach closures were being done to facilitate a hazardous activity that puts the public in danger in the first place.

But Lehrmann suggested there were other instances in which the government could be conducting dangerous activity that needed to be off limits to the public..

“So I don’t know that that’s a sufficient answer,” Lehrmann said.

Justice Young asked if SpaceX were to only conduct one launch per year, would her argument be the same. Perales said their argument, based on the plain language of the Constitution, would be the same.

Perales said the plain text would also prohibit state law enforcement from directing a training or simulation of a beach attack on the beach that excluded the public. However, she said that an analysis of whether that was a valid exercise of police power could apply, allowing that to go forward.

There were also questions from justices about whether private residents were allowed to file a legal challenge in this case.

An attorney representing Cameron County, James P. Allison, argued that the Open Beaches Act of the Texas Constitution did not create a private right of enforcement, meaning that private citizens should not be able to challenge the law.

Justice Jimmy Blacklock said there might be an argument that the lack of private enforcement renders the provision useless because it cannot be enforced. To that, Sullivan said that was incorrect because state agencies would still be allowed to file challenges in court.

However, Justice Jane N. Bland asked that if it is the state that is alleged to have violated the Constitution and the state is the only one with the right of enforcement, how would they remedy the state’s violation of the Constitution.

Allison did not directly answer the question, saying they could only apply the language of the Constitution.

Asked if local governments, like counties, could sue, Allison said they would have that power.

However, Perales pointed out in this case it was the county, along with the GLO, who were the ones impeding access to the beach and argued that a private citizen can sue the government to rectify a constitutional violation.