The Bipartisan Federal Housing Bill

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we'll dig into the bipartisan housing bill that became law this month nationally. You remember the backdrop, probably. President Trump refused to sign this law that was passed by Congress to protest the fact that they weren't also passing his so-called Save America Act to change voting rules around the country. But the housing bill took effect anyway without his signature.
That lack of signing, though, is what made the most news. So we want to give you details of what's in the actual law that might affect housing availability and affordability around the land. The new law, for example, restricts Wall Street investors from buying up single-family homes past a certain number, cuts red tape for home builders in various ways, and touches everything from manufactured housing to public housing.
What it doesn't include, from what I've read, is any new money. So will any of it actually reach your rent or your mortgage? Joining us now to break it all down is Rebecca Picciotto, who covers the residential rental market and housing policy generally for the Wall Street Journal. Rebecca, thanks for doing this with us. Welcome to WNYC.

**Rebecca Picciotto** (1:27)
Hey, thanks for having me.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:29)
I gave the short civics lesson in the intro, but you reported this out. How rare is it for a bill to become law, without the president signing it?

**Rebecca Picciotto** (1:39)
Yeah, I mean, this is, it was quite a rare moment. I think it's happened, single digit numbers over the past several decades.
And yeah, I mean, I think the general take away from the episode where Trump refused to sign it, was it was telling that he didn't veto the bill. Like he, you know, in his own words, said this legislation was kind of a quote, big yawn. And he kind of turned it into, you know, leverage to pursue other political priorities, like tightening voter registration requirements. But the fact that he let it become law, even without his signature, I think it tells you kind of the, you know, political necessity that lots of Republican lawmakers were looking at this bill with.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:33)
So let's get into what's actually in this thing, because it's a lot. The headline provision is the investor ban, which is your beat. It's not a ban, it's a limit. One of your recent headlines was, Wall Street is betting billions on rental homes as ownership slips out of reach. So what and to what degree does this law actually stop those firms from doing?

**Rebecca Picciotto** (2:58)
Yeah, good place to start. The investor ban was certainly the headline provision in a package with 50 some odd provisions. And basically, this investor ban, it will restrict investors who own 350 single-family homes or more from buying more homes.
So this investor ban went through months of back and forth negotiations between the House and the Senate. You know, the real estate lobby was very actively in opposition to this ban as it was initially proposed. But after months of talks, the investor ban is kind of now in a form that the real estate industry can live with, which means it's a bit softer than earlier versions.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:46)
Right. Well, when I hear the number 350, I think, wait, that's a limit? A speculating venture capital firm or whatever it is, can buy up 350 single family homes, and that's a limit?

**Rebecca Picciotto** (4:05)
Right. I mean, the White House, when Trump initially proposed this investor ban earlier this year, at the beginning of this year, the White House had initially wanted the threshold to be more than 100 homes, which obviously would have captured a lot more firms.
But they settled on this 350 threshold for a variety of reasons, one of which is, when you look at the investor-owned homes in the country, a lot of them are owned by quote unquote mom and pop investors, people who own maybe 10 to let's say 100 homes. That's the large majority of investor-owned housing stock. The 350 threshold, I think there's still questions on how that number was ultimately calculated, but I think it was a signal to the real estate industry that we don't want to get, we only want to go after the super big institutions, not the mom and pops. Though I hear your point, 350 is still quite a high threshold.

**Brian Lehrer** (5:08)
What do these institutions do with so many homes? Is that they rent them out for a while until the value goes up, and then they flip them for a profit? Or what's the point of a company owning 350 homes?