House passes ROAD to Housing Act, softens Wall Street home-buying limits

On May 20, 2026, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act by a vote of 396 to 13. The bill, numbered H.R. 6644, is a large bipartisan package meant to push more housing construction across the country. House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill of Arkansas and Ranking Member Maxine Waters of California wrote it together, which is rare for a major bill in a closely divided Congress.

The package does several things at once. It speeds up federal permitting for housing projects, raises the loan limits that help build apartment buildings, and cuts construction rules that make manufactured homes more expensive. It also gives local governments resources to loosen zoning rules that block new homes.

The provision drawing the most attention targets large investors. The bill bans any for-profit company that already owns 350 or more single-family homes from buying any more of them. A company that breaks the rule faces a civil penalty of up to $1 million per violation, or three times the purchase price, whichever is larger.

The idea behind the cap is simple. When a Wall Street firm bids cash on a starter home, a family using a mortgage often loses. The cap is meant to keep the largest players from crowding families out of the homes most likely to be a first purchase.

The House did not pass the Senate's version of the bill. It passed an amended version, and the change matters. The Senate's text required investors who build new rental homes to sell those homes to individual buyers within seven years. The House dropped that forced-sale rule entirely.

That means build-to-rent companies, which build whole neighborhoods of houses meant to be rented rather than sold, now get a clean exemption from the cap. House negotiators also stripped out several other loopholes the day before the vote to tighten the language.

The amended bill cleared the House the same week it was finished. Hill and Waters unveiled the updated text together, and the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska, helped shape it. Waters said the House package preserves more than 90 percent of the Senate bill while adding House-passed, Democrat-led housing provisions. Flood argued the House changes fixed a Senate provision he said was already stopping new developments by scaring off rental builders.

The path here has been long. The House first passed an earlier housing bill 390-9 in February 2026. The Senate then passed its own ROAD to Housing Act 89-10 in March 2026. The May 20 vote is the House responding to the Senate's version.

All 13 no votes came from Republicans, and nearly all of them belong to the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Their objection had little to do with housing or investors. They opposed a separate provision that bans the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency, but only through 2030.

Those members wanted a permanent ban. They argued a temporary one gives the Federal Reserve a clear runway to issue a digital dollar once the restriction lapses, which they view as a financial surveillance risk. The dissenters included Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Warren Davidson of Ohio.

The investor cap is aimed at a real but contained problem. Large institutional investors, the kind that own 1,000 homes or more, own less than 1% of all single-family homes nationwide. Counting all institutional owners, they hold roughly 3% of the single-family rental stock.

The national average hides sharp local concentration. In Indianapolis, the largest investors bought about 3.5% of all home sales between 2015 and 2025. In Seattle, institutional investors own around 4% of single-family rentals. In Sun Belt metros like Atlanta, Phoenix, and Tampa, the share is higher still.

President Donald Trump pushed hard for the bill and for the investor ban. In a January 2026 announcement and again on Truth Social, Trump said the United States should bar large investors from buying single-family homes, and he urged Congress to send him a bill. He has framed the issue around families who lose bidding wars to investment firms.

Trump's involvement put public pressure on House Republicans, but his preference for a stricter ban did not survive the House amendment. The forced-sale rule he and Senate negotiators had backed is the exact provision the House removed.

Industry and advocacy groups split on the result. A joint statement from 11 national housing organizations, including the National Association of Home Builders and the Mortgage Bankers Association, praised the bill for boosting supply. The National Low Income Housing Coalition called the amended text a welcome development but warned it leaves out disaster recovery reforms the Senate included.

The libertarian Cato Institute went the other way. Norbert Michel, who directs Cato's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, said the investor cap targets a tiny slice of the market while setting a precedent that Congress can bar any investor it chooses from buying property.

The bill is not law yet. Because the House passed a version different from the Senate's, the two chambers have to agree on a single text before it can go to the president. That can happen through a formal conference committee or through one chamber simply accepting the other's version.

The Senate now decides whether to accept the House changes, including the dropped forced-sale rule, or to push back. Until both chambers pass identical text, none of the cap, the permitting reforms, or the loan changes take effect.