Editorial/Opinion

Wisconsin residents are being caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to ever-increasing home costs.

According to the Wisconsin Realtors Association, the median value of homes in Wisconsin has more than doubled since 2010. In 2010, the median price of a home in Wisconsin was $141,000. In April 2025, the median price of a home in the state was $320,900. The trend shows no sign of stopping, with median home prices showing a price jump between April 2024 and April 2025 at nearly three times the rate of inflation.

With home prices soaring across the state, Wisconsin’s young families are being priced out of home ownership, while longtime residents are seeing steep tax bill increases due to rapidly rising assessments.

The housing market is big and complex. There are many factors that influence housing costs, including supply and demand, availability of low-cost interest rates and material costs. On the national level, and as an increasing factor in Wisconsin, is the growing presence of consolidation of available housing stock by investment companies and hedge funds. Sen. Sarah Keyeski of Lodi is seeking to put limits on hedge funds being able to purchase single-family homes in the state.

Hedge funds pool money, generally from wealthy investors, and invest it in a range of markets. This gives these investment groups a sizable pool of cash. When it comes to home purchases, these investors purchase single- family homes and convert them into rental properties.

While rentals are a necessary part of any community’s housing equation, consolidation of property ownership prevents individuals from building equity and longterm financial stability.

In an article with the independent, non-partisan news organization Wisconsin Watch, Keyeski said that hedge funds “really gives them almost unlimited power to buy what they would like at prices that are often out of reach for a typical purchaser.”

The deeper pockets of hedge funds and other investment groups gives them an advantage when it comes to outbidding private individuals and families.

This impact has been seen in the Milwaukee area where three companies, VineBrook Homes, SFR3 and Highgrove Holdings, owned about 1,500 homes as of the end of 2022, according to a 2023 analysis from John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. The impact is being felt nationally, too, with RedFin, a real estate brokerage and mortgage company, reporting that about one in six homes purchased in the last quarter of 2024 was by investor-backed groups.

Restricting the ability of these investor-backed groups from manipulating the housing markets through their ability to pay premium prices is a necessary step to ensure that individual homeowners have access to markets.

Home ownership is an intrinsic part of the American dream, and state leaders need to ensure that dream remains attainable for all Wisconsin residents.

Central Wisconsin Publications Editorial Board consists of publisher Kris O’Leary and Star News editor Brian Wilson