Leaders in the US House and Senate announced a deal Tuesday on a sweeping housing bill, ending a months-long standoff between the chambers over competing versions of the measure.
The deal brings the largest housing legislation in a generation one step closer to becoming law – and handing both parties and President Donald Trump a messaging win on affordability five months before a midterm election expected to center on cost-of-living concerns.
The cost of housing has soared in recent years, even as mortgage rates more than doubled in the wake of the pandemic, and policymakers across Washington have struggled to find tools to alleviate those pressures.
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The compromise includes restrictions on institutional investors purchasing single-family properties, which were key to getting the White House on board with the bill. But it omits a controversial measure that would require investors to dispose of built-to-rent properties within seven years.
The package includes banking deregulatory measures that House lawmakers had insisted on. It would also let a disaster recovery program administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development expire in three years, after House leaders objected to authorizing it for seven years. The measure would also ban the Federal Reserve from developing a central bank digital currency through 2030.
The Senate, meanwhile, added back a few provisions that the House had cut, including on wage requirements supported by labor unions. Senate leaders also successfully pushed the House to bolster the language curbing large investors' footprint in the housing market.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday he expects the Senate to pass the bill this week and that he hoped the House would be able to send the legislation to the president's desk next week.
The bill "gives Congress a chance to deliver a major win for families across the country," Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, a Republican of South Carolina, said in a statement. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking panel, called the legislation "historic," saying it would "for the first time ever" stop "private equity from buying up homes."
House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, a Republican of Arkansas, and Ranking Member Maxine Waters, a Democrat of California, also praised the compromise legislation.
