Breakthrough agreement in housing bill gives investors wins

The U.S. House is poised to approve a bipartisan housing affordability bill Wednesday that would limit major investors from purchasing single-family homes while allowing them to build additional housing units.

The measure is getting support from the White House after some last-minute changes struck a balance between the Senate version, which placed more restrictions on major investors owning homes, and the House version, which was seen as more friendly toward Wall Street.

The legislation won the support of the rental, construction and housing industries by removing a requirement in the Senate-passed bill that would have forced major investors — defined as those owning 350 units or more — to sell any any units they built beyond the cap within a seven-year window.

The housing affordability bill has ping-ponged several times between the House and the Senate. Both chambers approved their own version of the bill with strong bipartisan support earlier this year, but several provisions — including the ones overseeing investors in the housing market — have lead to inter-chamber disputes.

It’s not clear whether the revamped House bill will gain the needed 60 votes to pass in the Senate before advancing to the White House for President Donald Trump’s signature. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the committee overseeing housing, worked with the White House to get several provisions with Democratic support into the bill. And other senators voted against the bill in March because of concerns with the forced sale of build-to-rent homes, arguing that would decrease housing supply.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters in response to a question from CNBC on Tuesday that when the House passes the bill, the Senate will “deal with it accordingly.”

Still, other senators said their original bill was right to target investors who build homes with the intention of renting, not selling, them.

Th House “basically gutted President Trump’s principal priority, which is to make certain that young people have access to single-family homes to buy,” Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told CNBC in a hallway interview. He added that the requirement for investors to sell the homes they build was key to expanding homeownership.

“If we kill the build-and-rent industry, so be it,” he said. “We don’t want homes to be for rent, we want them to be the way that young people, especially, build generational wealth.