The Senate on Thursday passed the largest housing affordability bill in 30 years, including a ban on investors buying single-family homes, by a vote of 89-10.
But the bill faces a fight in the House, which passed its own bipartisan bill in February. House Republican leaders have already signaled they will not take up the Senate-passed bill, saying the bill requires negotiation. House Minority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) told House Republicans in a closed session earlier this week that the bill would likely stall due to disagreements in both chambers.
One of the biggest problems is that investors and companies that already own more than 350 units will be prohibited from purchasing single-family homes. Companies that increase the supply of housing through construction or major renovations will be able to own more homes, but must sell those homes within seven years.
The provision was originally not in either the Senate bill or the House-passed bill, but President Donald Trump supported the ban and said he would not sign the bill without it.
Friday, January 16, 2026, apartment complexes and residences in Queens, New York, USA.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A number of industry groups, including the National Association of Home Builders, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and the National Housing Council, said in a statement that the seven-year restriction would eliminate the production of ready-made homes and “result in hundreds of thousands of homes being taken off the market over the next decade, many of them for low- and moderate-income households.”
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren supports adding institutional homeownership limits, saying it would protect consumers.
“They can also build as many apartment complexes, as many apartment complexes, as many triplexes as they want,” Warren said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday. “But there’s a principled point here: Private equity can’t come in and buy up all of America’s housing supply. Housing should be for families, not giant corporations.”
However, that view was not shared worldwide.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who voted against the bill, said the 350-unit cap was “banana” and would eventually lead to a ban on rental housing. Like Warren, Schatz has a history of voting liberally.
“I don’t think people anticipated how much of a negative impact this would have on the supply side,” he said, adding that it would “ruin” the single- and duplex rental market.
