Congress will soon send President Trump bipartisan legislation designed to increase housing supply and lower the cost of homeownership — one of the many affordability challenges confronting American consumers.
Most of the policies in the bill are not quick fixes, so it will take time before potential buyers realize any benefits.
“Limited housing supply and burdensome regulations have contributed to higher prices, and many Americans are simply being priced out of the housing market,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican.
“So this bill cuts unnecessary red tape that’s delaying construction and driving up prices,” Mr. Thune said.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act relies on a basic economic principle: that increasing supply lowers prices.
However, demand is high in only certain segments of the market. New market-rate construction prices are out of reach for most low- and moderate-income families, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The group’s annual report found that unsold inventories grew in 2025, prompting builders to cut prices and pivot toward more cost-efficient homes and lots.
The bill seeks to help with that issue by removing and streamlining government regulations that have driven up the cost of home construction.
A National Association of Home Builders study released this month found that regulatory costs account for 26.4% of the final price of a new single-family home, up 2.6 percentage points since the group’s 2021 study.
That equates to $131,734 in regulatory costs for a new home priced at $499,500, the industry average as of January.
Regulatory costs, along with high material costs and elevated interest rates, are slowing home construction and creating supply issues.
The U.S. has a structural housing deficit of 1.2 million units, according to the National Association of Home Builders, which supports the legislation moving through Congress.
“The housing shortage in the United States is nothing less than an existential threat to the American dream,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.
He said the crisis is so dire that it brought both parties together “at a time of such division.”
The housing package, a compilation of dozens of individual bills, has taken lawmakers years to negotiate, with negotiations moving back and forth between the House and the Senate multiple times this Congress.
On Tuesday, leaders of the Senate and House panels with jurisdiction over housing policy announced they had finally reached a bipartisan, bicameral compromise ready to be sent to the president’s desk.
“This bill, combining House and Senate priorities, would represent the biggest housing bill in more than 30 years,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. “Let’s get it done.”
The Senate will vote on final passage of the bill Monday evening, and the House is expected to follow suit later in the week.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, Arkansas Republican, and ranking member Maxine Waters, California Democrat, resisted pressure to accept multiple Senate-led versions of the bill and fought for key House priorities.
They ultimately persuaded senators to include provisions providing regulatory relief to community banks so they can expand home lending opportunities, and worked out a key compromise on a top Trump priority.
“Bipartisan, bicameral legislating is never easy — but progress matters,” Mr. Hill said.
In May, Mr. Trump urged lawmakers to pass a Senate version of the bill because it included language codifying his executive order banning large Wall Street investment firms from buying up housing supply and depriving individuals of opportunities to own homes.
The bill would ban companies with investment control of 350 or more single-family homes from purchasing additional units.
The Senate bill would also have forced those companies to sell their existing units within seven years, drawing backlash from the National Association of Home Builders and other industry groups that argued it would devastate the build-to-rent market. House negotiators successfully eliminated that provision from the final agreement.
The right-leaning American Enterprise Institute argues that the effort by Mr. Trump and Congress to target large institutional investors is misguided, as they own less than 1% of the nation’s single-family homes and have sold as many rental homes as they acquired over the past two years.
“Their presence tends to be localized, cyclical, and not a primary driver of home price growth,” AEI scholars Edward J. Pinto and Tobias Peter wrote in an April report. “They contribute positively by adding supply through built-to-rent housing, rehabilitating distressed properties, and serving working families who often are not positioned for homeownership.”
State and local policies also factor into housing costs. The bill offers incentives, rather than mandates, to help address more localized issues.
For example, the measure authorizes a seven-year innovation fund to help communities build more housing supply, and it OKs pilot grant programs for regional housing planning and for converting vacant and abandoned buildings into housing.
The bill also instructs the Department of Housing and Urban Development to develop zoning and land-use policy best practices that localities can use to help identify and overcome barriers to housing development.
Sen. Tina Smith, Minnesota Democrat, touted provisions she secured in the bill to overhaul the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service program that offers loans and grants to finance affordable housing in rural areas.
Ms. Smith said many properties built through the program are dated and in disrepair, and current owners cannot keep up with the costs.
The bill makes it easier for nonprofits to take over mortgages and renovate properties and “simplifies the foreclosure process to save the government money and protect tenants so that properties can be transferred to new owners,” Ms. Smith said.
She said the updates to the Rural Housing Service program will preserve up to 400,000 apartments and homes in rural communities.
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