Key Questions Remain as Housing Bill Returns to Congress This Week

Congress will again take up its major bipartisan housing legislation package this week.

The 21st Century Road to Housing Act, a wide-ranging housing reform package, will come to the House floor for debate Tuesday. Sources on both sides of the aisle tell Realtor.com® that some congressional leaders would like to see a vote Wednesday or Thursday.

President Donald Trump has called for progress on the deadlocked bill. While he urged the House to pass the Senate's version, he hasn't weighed in on the House's new amendments.

The bill, one of the most comprehensive housing reform packages in decades, is a shot for both parties to notch a bipartisan win ahead of the 2026 midterms.

But the House and Senate versions contain differences in language that targets institutional investors in the single-family housing market. Trump and some progressive Democrats have called for strict crackdowns on institutional homeowners, but the issue is a sticking point with moderates.

What's happening this week?

The House passed its version of the bill in February. The Senate passed its own draft in March, but its version was more expansive and included the investor ban among many other provisions. The chambers must come to agreement before the bill can advance to the White House.

So, this week the House will consider a resolution for concurrence with Senate amendments. But the House's latest version of the bill has some changes, most notably in the language of the investor ban. That language was a sticking point in the House.

Several prominent real estate groups came out with concerns about the bill, especially because it targets build-to-rent operators, with a rule that they sell their properties within seven years.

The Senate may later need to approve the House tweaks, because the two chambers need to agree on one version of the bill before Trump can sign it. That may require the chambers to call a conference committee to reach an agreement on a final text, which would need another vote from both chambers.

The National Association of Home Builders, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce lined up in support of the amended bill.

What are House members saying?

The bill's main shepherds, House Financial Services Committee Chair Rep. French Hill, R-Arkansas, ranking member Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, and Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance Chair Rep. Mike Flood, R-Nebraska, have urged the bill forward.

A motley assortment of House groups that don't typically agree have all come out seeking to approve this latest version of the bill. That includes the 135-member bipartisan House Real Estate Caucus and the 115-member progressive New Democrat Coalition. Both urged their members to support the bill over the weekend.

"Chairman Hill and Ranking Member Waters’ bill adequately reforms this provision, while delivering on our shared commitment to restoring access to the American dream of homeownership," Real Estate Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Lou Correa, D-California, said over the weekend.

Some members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are vocal opponents of the changes between the two chambers. Chair Rep. Andy Harris, R-Maryland, thinks the Senate's version has too many concessions and mandates coming from the Senate's liberals, Politico reported.

Rep. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, previously said on the House floor that the bill should prevent developers from permanently locking out residents from their communities.

Where does the institutional investor ban stand?

The House's version now also enshrines a ban on institutional investors in the single-family housing market, threatening penalties for those entities that acquire more than 350 homes after the bill takes effect.

The House's version of the bill now exempts build-to-rent developers from a rule that would have forced them to divest from their holdings in seven years. That had set off a firestorm of worry that the rule could crush investment in build-to-rent, reducing available housing stock.

The House bill also cut out a requirement that build-to-rent developers then spend 15% of the purchase price on upgrades. Instead, they need only bring a home to mortgage-ready condition.

Those changes satisfied the NAHB, which had been strong critics of the previous language.

"We urge House members to pass this landmark legislation and ask the Senate to approve this compromise swiftly," NAHB Chair Bill Owens said.

How does the bill impact Community Development Block Grant programs?

The House bill made adjustments to reforms proposed to the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) programs, which provide annual grants to local governments to support affordable housing development.

The bill ties CDBG allocations to housing growth performance. Those municipalities producing housing above a certain threshold gain a bonus, those below suffer a penalty. That provision worries some groups, such as the National Association of Counties, which worries that such a measure adds instability to the CDBG program.

And they say the move could complicate multiyear real estate developments. NaCo also says it ignores local zoning nuances and local development capacity. The revised bill caps penalties at $1 million, allaying some of those fears, because only the largest municipalities come close to that.

The Trump administration has made no secret of its critiques of the CDBG program, proposing to cut the program outright from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development budget. But that idea appears to be broadly unpopular with Congress.

The House also removed a Senate provision that tried to permanently enshrine the CDBG Disaster Recovery program.

How could the bill impact renters?

Bloomberg also reported on a letter from HUD this weekend, raising concerns over several provisions. A provision to study renter disputes related to large institutional investors could have "serious negative consequences" and "involve HUD in broader tenant related matters than intended."

It also called an eviction hotline idea redundant, saying local and state governments already have tools to do the same thing.