Senate passes bill to lower housing costs and restrict Wall Street from buying homes

3 hours ago by MicroWave to c/politics

The bipartisan legislation was crafted in both chambers and must now pass the House. It seeks to build more homes and prevent large investors from out-bidding families.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Monday to pass a sweeping housing affordability bill aimed at lowering costs, putting Congress on the brink of a rare bipartisan victory in Donald Trump’s second term.

The vote was 85-5.

The legislation, which makes it easier to build homes and slaps limits on Wall Street investors from buying up houses, now goes to the House, which hopes to vote on it in the next few days. Then, it would go to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.

aramis87 34 points 2 hours ago

That it's gotten this far with this many votes means that investment firms have already placed language into the bill that will let them continue to buy up houses by completing a few additional low-effort steps.

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BrianTheeBiscuiteer 21 points 2 hours ago

Last I heard the limit on ownership was 100 units, but it may not have been very aggressive at avoiding companies from splitting off into 1000 LLCs or other such nonsense.

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aramis87 10 points 2 hours ago

That's what I'm guessing, that each LLC is only allowed a certain number of units, or there's a limit on the number of different types of units which will only lead them to re-name each type of unit to something else. It's no longer "single family homes" but "one unit housing with land". Or it limits the amount of "affordable housing" they can buy, but then they just change what's affordable, or only build luxury houses - like everyone wants affordable, economical cars these days, but all you can buy are expensive, gas-guzzling SUVs.

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EndlessNightmare 1 point 9 minutes ago

How does it affect multi-family housing (e.g. apartment buildings)? And is this considered a problem, or is it only buying SFH that is the issue?

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unitedwithme 9 points 2 hours ago

Hah, I was about to comment that there's no doubt some fine print in there that does still allow a shell company to buy, so while the book looks great, the story is shit!

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cattywampas 3 points 42 minutes ago

Is that actually true or are you just assuming this?

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Steve 9 points an hour ago

That article is trash.
It offers no details about what the bill actually says or does, just what the senators say it does. It's only reporting the horse race aspects of it's passage, which is the least important part.

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TheTechnician27 3 points 23 minutes ago

It's only reporting the horse race aspects of it's passage, which is the least important part.

That's because you can go right now to the legislation they hyperlinked if you want to know the text of the bill. The fact that the article is reporting on the politics surrounding a bill and giving a broad overview of what it does doesn't make it "trash"; it makes it not what you're specifically interested in, which is fine.

Which part of the 381-page document are you upset they weren't quoting from or deep-diving into?

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oakey66 5 points 23 minutes ago

if both parties voted for this, I’m curious to hear what the loopholes are for the rich to get richer off of it.

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rafoix 3 points 31 minutes ago

Does it exclude private equity?

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Formfiller 2 points 10 minutes ago

They must be insider trading with contractors now. Her comes the no bid contracts for companies owned by their family members

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bedifferent 0 points 2 hours ago

@MicroWave I remember looking at stupidly split houses. One home had a long driveway with a garage turned to a small house. It was nuts and many of the houses were obviously owned by businesses. It was bad. Chump won't sign it. He does other great things like ...

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