Wall Street homebuyers rattled by President Donald Trump’s broadside are plotting their own proposals to defuse the risk of getting shut out of the housing market.

“If the administration were to sit down with a group of us we could put a we could put a proposal — we could put a project — together,” Pretium Co-President Stephen Scherr said in an interview Monday on Bloomberg Television. “Conversations, as you might imagine, have begun,” he added, referring to talks within the industry.

While politicians have long targeted single-family rental companies, Trump’s proposal on social media last week to ban institutional home purchases blindsided many in the industry.

Later remarks by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that the Trump administration would restrict future purchases without forcing companies like Invitation Homes Inc. or Blackstone Inc.’s Tricon Residential to divest their current holdings.

Scherr, whose company is among the largest owners of single-family rental homes, said that one possibility was a more robust approach to rent-to-own programs aimed at helping people build credit and capital needed to eventually purchase a home.

“Imagine a scenario in which rent is paid, money is held back to provide against a deposit account for a down payment,” he said.

Both banks and government-sponsored entities could play a role in such a scenario, Scherr said. “Imagine mortgages in the 1% or 2% category,” he added. “Imagine where we were to link arms with homebuilders who could build smaller, more affordable homes.”

Scherr, who was previously chief financial officer at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said that companies like Pretium are already helping to promote lower costs by providing capital to create new housing for renters, where he said the housing shortage is most acute.

“The president has put on the table a critically important issue,” Scherr said. “There’s an opportunity for a big beautiful housing bill to come together, to which we would play a part.”

(With assistance from Sridhar Natarajan, Tim Stenovec and Emily Graffeo.)

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