COVERAGE INFORMATION:

California Department of Real Estate (DRE) NEWS CLIPS service coverage:

Monday through Friday (except state holidays) each week includes electronic format articles retrieved from newspapers or news services that report real estate related news in California and some national services. Coverage is for California newspapers that are available electronically via the Internet - and any significant related breaking news.

Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Top Stories

Top legislator says state ‘must do better’ on housing after Newsom budget plan

STEPHEN HOBBS, The Sacramento Bee
The chair of the California Assembly’s budget committee said Tuesday that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s current spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year does not go far enough on housing and homelessness. “The lack of resources for housing in the governor’s budget is impossible to ignore and it does not reflect our prior commitments or our values,” Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, D-Encino, said during the committee’s first hearing of the year. “We can and must do better regardless of our budget situation.”

What Trump’s Housing Executive Order Means for Mortgages

HUGH CAMERON, Newsweek
President Donald Trump’s recent executive order aims to prevent corporations from buying up single-family homes and keeping renters off the market, a move the administration says will make housing more affordable for everyday Americans. Building on earlier proclamations, Trump on Tuesday directed the relevant executive agencies to explore ways of preventing the federal government from supporting loans or offering other incentives to “large institutional investors” to purchase single-family homes that that “could otherwise be purchased by families.”

National News 

Trump Says ‘America Will Not Become a Nation of Renters’ as He Touts Restrictions on Investor Homebuyers in Davos Speech

KEITH GRIFFITH, Realtor.com
President Donald Trump touted new restrictions on large investor homebuyers in a speech on Wednesday morning, as his administration focuses on the housing crisis ahead of the midterm elections. Trump announced the new measures during his special address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, after signing an executive order that restricts mortgage lending for institutional buyers of single-family homes. "Homes are built for people, not for corporations, and America will not become a nation of renters," said Trump. "That's why I have signed an executive order banning large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. It's just not fair to the public. They're not—they're not able to buy a house."

Wall Street-backed landlords a target for both Trump and Democrats

JENNIFER LUDDEN, NPR
Back in 2020, Ashley Maxwell and her husband were looking to buy their first home, near Indianapolis.
"We looked at over 80 homes in probably a span of two months," she said. The couple was in a tight spot. They had three kids and were forced to move because their landlord was selling their rental. That pressure made their search all the more frustrating. "We would pull up to a house, our agent would get out and be like, 'There's 10 additional offers, sight unseen, all cash.' Typically that means it's an investor," Maxwell recalled.

California News

Consumers in wait-and-see mode as San Diego home prices and sales drop

PHILLIP MOLNAR, San Diego Union-Tribune
San Diego County home sales hit their second-lowest point of the year in November as mortgage rates ticked up.
Across the county, 1,913 homes sold in November, down 22.4% from the previous month, according to figures released Tuesday by Attom Data Solutions.
November is typically a slower month for sales, but not to this extreme. It was the second-slowest sales for that month in nearly 40 years of data. Only November 2023 was slower with 1,779 sales.

California home prices fell while sales rose to close out 2025

MARC STERNFIELD, KTLA
California’s housing market ended 2025 with sales edging higher, while home prices were generally lower than a year ago. The statewide median price for an existing single-family home fell 1.2% year over year to $850,680 in December, according to data released by the California Association of Realtors. While prices softened, buyer activity rose 2% compared with December 2024.

Industry News 

Realtor.com+ Bets Big on the MLS as US Real Estate Enters a Pivotal Phase

Edmund Keith, Online Marketplaces
Realtor.com has chosen a very deliberate moment to place what it calls one of the biggest bets in its history. This week, the US portal unveiled Realtor.com Plus, a collaborative home search platform built in direct partnership with multiple listing services, and framed squarely as a reaffirmation of the MLS-led, open marketplace model. At a time when private listings, off-MLS inventory strategies and closed ecosystems are becoming increasingly prominent in the US conversation, the move is as much philosophical as it is technical.

Real Estate Technology 

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