Landmark Housing Bill to be sent to Trump after he abruptly canceled signing

The historic Road to Housing Act of the 21st Century will be sent to the President Donald Trumpa day after he abruptly canceled its signing.

A spokesperson for the Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-LA) confirmed to Realtor.com® that Johnson will formally submit the bill to Trump. Once he receives it, the president has ten days to sign or veto the bill. If he doesn’t take action while Congress is in session, it will automatically become law.

The bipartisan bill is one of the most comprehensive housing bills in decades.

The House passed it by a vote of 358-32 on Tuesday evening, a day after the Senate easily passed the bill by a vote of 85-5. The bill’s 45 provisions are aimed at reducing red tape and encouraging the construction of more homes.

This includes restrictions on institutional investors in the housing market, new banking rules aimed at promoting mortgage lending and measures to reduce red tape and accelerate home construction.

But just as the two parties welcomed the bill as an act of bipartisanship to lower housing costs, Trump suddenly canceled a bill-signing ceremony on Wednesday. He called the bill “minor” and demanded that Congress pass an unrelated voter ID bill, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.

Housing reform in limbo

The cancellation confused Washington and frustrated lawmakers. Johnson — who was in the middle of a press conference touting the bill when Trump announced his intentions in a Truth Social post — said he would follow Trump’s lead.

“We’re delaying this. As you know, he has a certain amount of time before he has to sign a bill, and he’s going to use a little more of that time, and we’re going to work through this together,” Johnson said Wednesday.

“As we go through the details of the bill, the president will understand that it is a good product,” Johnson said later. “And certainly something that delivers on its promises to drive down costs.”

Democrats quickly denounced the decision.

“President Trump once again chose political gamesmanship over meaningful solutions for the American people,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), one of the bill’s leading supporters, said Thursday.

Democrats have also strongly opposed the SAVE America Act. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said Wednesday he would vote against any Republican-led House bills that come before the Senate until Johnson introduces the bill.

Jay Shumansays a Nelson Mullins lawyer who focuses on real estate Realtor.com he has already received many calls from customers trying to figure out how to respond. The delay complicates matters, especially for developers affected by the investor ban.

“Developers are inherently risk-averse,” says Shuman. “To have this uncertainty among all the other headwinds they might face in terms of interest rates and construction costs, it just makes for a more challenging environment.”

What’s in the 21st Century Road to Housing Act?

The final version of the bill contains 45 provisions spread over 381 pages with major consequences for housing. Many of the measures are aimed at boosting housing production to tackle a huge national deficit.

Realtor.com® estimates that the country has a shortage of more than 4 million homes, as a result of more than a decade of building fewer homes than needed to meet demand.

“The legislation aims, among other things, to stimulate housing construction by establishing policy guidelines and best practices, streamlining environmental review and improving existing programs, including linking community development block grants to housing outcomes,” said Realtor.com’s chief economist. Danielle Hale. “This latest provision allows the federal government to put its finger on policymaking at the state and local level, where many of the policy and regulatory hurdles to housing development exist.”

The legislation also makes changes to make it easier to build and finance both manufactured and modular homes, which could lower construction costs if it were more widely used.

Key provisions of the bill include:

• Restriction of business buyers: Blocks Wall Street firms and large institutional investors from mass purchasing single-family homes, and backs the ban with steep financial penalties.

• Zoning plan reform: Creates a $200 million grant program to reward cities that eliminate restrictive zoning, while penalizing slow-growing communities by cutting their CDBG funding by 10%.

• Reducing administrative burden: Accelerates construction timelines by waiving lengthy NEPA environmental reviews for low-impact HUD projects and streamlining repetitive property inspections.

• Expanding access to mortgages: Launches a HUD pilot program to expand access to small-dollar mortgages under $100,000 and increases the amount of private bank capital that can be invested in local affordable housing.

• Modernization of factory-built housing: Updates FHA lending standards and drawing schedules to make financing for manufactured and modular homes equivalent to traditional site-built homes.

• Disaster recovery solutions: Permanently authorizes the CDBG-Disaster Recovery framework for faster post-disaster reconstruction and protects low-income rural renters from loss of rental assistance when a property’s underlying mortgage matures.