The fight over how Congress bans institutional investors from buying single-family homes has taken a big turn.
Late Wednesday night, House Republican leadership posted the text of their amendment to the Senate-passed 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. For the build-to-rent industry and institutional single-family rental landlords, the news is significant: the controversial 7-year selloff requirement has been removed, according to ResiClub’s reading of the bill.
Here's how we got here—and what the House version would actually do.
The backstory
On January 7, President Trump announced he was taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes and called on Congress to codify it. On January 20, he went further with an executive order directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop backing purchases by large institutional investors — while explicitly promising a build-to-rent exemption in whatever ban Congress ultimately passed. By February 19, the White House had reportedly settled on defining "large investors" as entities owning 100 or more homes.
What Congress delivered was somewhat different. On March 2, Tim Scott (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, setting the threshold at 350 homes. The Senate passed it 89–10 in March. But the bill came with a catch that alarmed the housing industry: while build-to-rent was technically exempted (purchases of homes that require major repairs were also exempted), institutional landlords would be required to sell those homes acquired through the exemptions to individual buyers within seven years of purchase. The National Association of Home Builders withdrew support. A bipartisan group of 76 House members signed a letter calling the selloff rule a measure that would "effectively halt the production of Build-to-Rent housing nationwide."
What the House changed
The House amendment, posted Wednesday, keeps the core ban intact. It would ban large institutional investors from purchasing additional single-family homes. Institutional SFR landlords—defined by the bill as entities that control 350 or more single-family homes—would be allowed to keep the homes they already own.
What's gone is the 7-year selloff. Under the House version, build-to-rent is a clean exemption: institutional investors can build or buy newly constructed homes for rental and hold them indefinitely, with no forced disposition clock. Renovate-to-rent is similarly freed from the selloff requirement.
Under the Senate bill, an institutional renovate-to-rent purchase required the investor to spend at least 15% of the purchase price on improvements. The House version drops that numerical floor, instead requiring only that the home fail to meet structural or core system elements of local building codes, or minimum property standards for conventional mortgage financing.
The House also added several new exemptions not found in the Senate bill. Homes purchased with Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) or other affordable housing programs with restricted rents are now fully exempt—a notable change, since the Senate's 7-year rule conflicted directly with LIHTC's mandatory 15-year compliance period. Single-parcel planned rental Build-to-Rent communities—homes built, permitted, and managed as a unified rental development on one platted parcel—get their own clean exemption. So do acquisitions of five or more contiguous rental units and facilities providing residential care to people with disabilities.
The House also added a new tenant protection: HUD would be required to establish a renter outreach hotline and public website within 180 days of enactment so renters of institutionally owned homes can report disputes.
What comes next
We'll have to wait and see how the White House and Senate feel about these changes. President Donald Trump publicly endorsed the Senate version as-is on Monday (May 12) via Truth Social; however, Politico also reported that the White House privately signaled it would like to see the 7-year selloff dropped. Whether the Senate—in particular Senator Elizabeth Warren—accepts the elimination of the 7-year selloff, a provision she helped include, remains to be seen.