The 21st Century Road to Housing Act passed both the House and the Senate last week and is headed to the president to be signed into law. But as of IWFNN press time, that’s where it remains.
The Housing Act, according to those who have studied it, is a collection of provisions designed to encourage home building and make it easier for Americans to buy homes. The highest profile piece of the new legislation prevents corporate investors from buying up more than 350 individual properties. These investors have been scooping up large numbers of single-family homes and then renting them out rather than offering them for sale, reducing the available inventory for potential home buyers.
That provision was perhaps the most contested component of the bill as those on both sides of the issue pushed their point of view. According to published reports, investor-owned homes make up 3 percent of the single-family rental market and some have argued that restricting them from buying up more homes might have the opposite effect of taking potential fixer-uppers out of the market. Others claimed that was not the case and adding to the rental inventories took more homes out of the resale sector.
The new law would provide a number of builder-friendly provisions, eliminating some environmental reviews and creating so-called “pattern books” that would speed up the code approval process.
