- Key insight: The full House is expected to vote tomorrow on updated housing bill text that softens a ban on institutional investors owning some homes, removing a requirement that build-to-rent investors sell those properties within seven years.
- What's at stake: The House version also includes community bank provisions that would ease rules around brokered and custodial deposits, measures that Senate Democrats have privately urged colleagues to oppose as backdoor deregulation.
- Forward look: Passage is far from certain, as populist lawmakers on both sides want stricter limits on institutional home ownership.
WASHINGTON — The full House of Representatives is expected to vote on an updated version of a landmark housing bill tomorrow, with the new bill text including revised language concerning a controversial provision on institutional investors' ability to own single-family homes.
The House housing bill got a substantial change on Tuesday, as its authors proposed language very closely identical to the Senate version of a ban on institutional investor housing ownership, although it
The House version of the bill also includes a number of community bank provisions that were not
Those provisions in particular — along with the institutional housing ban on some single family home ownership — could ultimately jeopardize the bill's passage in the Senate.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, has privately encouraged Senate Democrats to ultimately oppose those community bank measures, arguing that they're a backdoor into deregulation of the banking system, according to two people familiar with negotiations.
The institutional housing ban is also a controversial point for some Republicans and particularly populist Democrats. On both sides of the aisle, populist lawmakers want a more stringent prohibition on institutional investor home ownership, while others want to make sure that whatever is passed doesn't inadvertently discourage builders from investing in housing projects.
If the bill passes the full House — an outcome that's not entirely assured, as election-sensitive representatives have had a history of waylaying banking bills this Congress — it throws the bill back to the Senate, where there are a few options to move it forward.
The Senate version of the housing bill has already passed the upper chamber in a 89-10 vote. With a passed House version, the Senate could amend their version, go to a conference committee with the House to resolve the significant differences or do nothing in the hopes that the House takes up the Senate-passed bill.
House Financial Services Committee ranking member Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., had signaled that her caucus has signed off on the legislation. The House will consider many of the community banking provisions under suspension of the rules on Tuesday evening to show their bipartisan support in the lower chamber.
"The House has proven that bipartisan action is possible," Waters said in a statement. "Now it is time for the Senate to meet the urgency of this moment, work with us in good faith, and finally deliver the bold, bicameral action the American people have long demanded and deserve."
Leadership in the Senate hasn't committed to any particular path, but have said that they would prefer that the House pass the Senate version of the legislation.
"We need a good housing bill," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters on Tuesday. "The best way, quickest way to get a housing bill done is for the House to pass the Senate bill, plain and simple."
