Archives having issues scraping nytimes lately. 381 page bill too.
“The measure prohibits corporate entities from owning more than 350 existing single-family homes, although it does not require them to sell homes purchased before the measure became law.”
They don’t mention anything about foreign investments but China is trying to rein in their own overseas spending to boost national investment.
Carve outs:
- Investors may purchase homes owned by other investors.
- There are additional exceptions related to previous contracts and legal obligations, or
if the purchase is part of a loss-mitigation strategy.
There's a lot I don't understand here. How did they come up with 350? I doubt there are any people who own more than 10 houses for personal use, and this is 35x that.
What's to stop people from just making multiple corporate entities? Or investors below the cap buying properties and flipping them to institutional investors above the cap bypassing the cap entirely?
We all love the bipartisanship, but this is probably too little too late.
Partly because the federal governments leverage on local politics is very little but majorly because currently the interest rate and the labor/material costs is just too high especially on the coasts and none of that is regulatory burden. The Atlantic had a great breakdown [1].
Congress and/or state governments should work on a preferable interest rates for construction loans scheme and engineers need to bust through Moravecs paradox to get some productivity boosts in construction going, everything else is window dressing.
It's not that it's too little; there's no evidence it would do anything. Everyone wan'ts the house they sell to be worth more, and the house they buy to be cheaper. No one can make both happen, but politics have succeeded at making housing worth more, and have to settle for giving the appearance that they're doing something to make it cheaper, without actually doing anything. If they actually make building houses cheaper, they will have failed at their goal of making them more expensive.
It's like banning holding cell phones while driving. Talking on a cell phone while driving significantly increases the likelihood of getting in an accident, but it also makes people much more productive. There's no way to keep that productivity while driving, without hurting safety, and most people want to keep that productivity. The solution is to ban holding a cellphone while driving, while still allowing talking on a cell phone, which statistically makes no difference whatsoever. This allows politicians to do nothing, which lets people keep the productivity they desire, while also giving the appearance that they are doing something to increase safety. This kind of not-really-a-tradeoff security theater also exists in things like airport security, pandemic responses, banking identification standards, and forensics.
The easiest way to get a higher valuation for your house is to sell to an apartment builder. I realize there are loads of cultural hangups around doing that (the driving force behind NIMBY-ism), but the mathematical truth is that there is a win-win solution here if "Everyone wan'ts the house they sell to be worth more" is the only problem.
Peoples' demands are even more unreasonable: Until they sell, they want nothing in their neighborhood to change. They don't want an apartment building where their neighbor was.
It's behind a paywall. Does this disallow corporations and non-USA residents from buying property?
That works here in Switzerland sort of - prices are still super high but more because of local wealth, not Russians and Chinese buying everything. There are underdeveloped places where foreigners are allowed to buy - Andermatt for example is filled with rich Americans.
Also, pretty much every apartment complex is corporate owned. At least it doesn't matter that the law doesn't do anything, because it's easily worked around by having a separate company broker purchases.
Unclear how this is going to help? A corporation can only buy 350 single family homes. Ok, so, what's to prevent making a new corporation at 349, with the same staff?
agree our condo building has the SAME question Limiting one owner to own a set number of multiple units yet what about that owners wife/cousin/son/son in law......become owners of multiple units in the same building?
Gift link
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/us/politics/congress-hous...
https://archive.ph/gA9Vo Partial view.
Archives having issues scraping nytimes lately. 381 page bill too.
“The measure prohibits corporate entities from owning more than 350 existing single-family homes, although it does not require them to sell homes purchased before the measure became law.”
They don’t mention anything about foreign investments but China is trying to rein in their own overseas spending to boost national investment.
Carve outs: - Investors may purchase homes owned by other investors.
- There are additional exceptions related to previous contracts and legal obligations, or if the purchase is part of a loss-mitigation strategy.
https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/21ST_Century_ROAD_Expl...
There's a lot I don't understand here. How did they come up with 350? I doubt there are any people who own more than 10 houses for personal use, and this is 35x that.
What's to stop people from just making multiple corporate entities? Or investors below the cap buying properties and flipping them to institutional investors above the cap bypassing the cap entirely?
We all love the bipartisanship, but this is probably too little too late.
Partly because the federal governments leverage on local politics is very little but majorly because currently the interest rate and the labor/material costs is just too high especially on the coasts and none of that is regulatory burden. The Atlantic had a great breakdown [1].
Congress and/or state governments should work on a preferable interest rates for construction loans scheme and engineers need to bust through Moravecs paradox to get some productivity boosts in construction going, everything else is window dressing.
The ball has moved!
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026/03/california-housi...
It's not that it's too little; there's no evidence it would do anything. Everyone wan'ts the house they sell to be worth more, and the house they buy to be cheaper. No one can make both happen, but politics have succeeded at making housing worth more, and have to settle for giving the appearance that they're doing something to make it cheaper, without actually doing anything. If they actually make building houses cheaper, they will have failed at their goal of making them more expensive.
It's like banning holding cell phones while driving. Talking on a cell phone while driving significantly increases the likelihood of getting in an accident, but it also makes people much more productive. There's no way to keep that productivity while driving, without hurting safety, and most people want to keep that productivity. The solution is to ban holding a cellphone while driving, while still allowing talking on a cell phone, which statistically makes no difference whatsoever. This allows politicians to do nothing, which lets people keep the productivity they desire, while also giving the appearance that they are doing something to increase safety. This kind of not-really-a-tradeoff security theater also exists in things like airport security, pandemic responses, banking identification standards, and forensics.
The easiest way to get a higher valuation for your house is to sell to an apartment builder. I realize there are loads of cultural hangups around doing that (the driving force behind NIMBY-ism), but the mathematical truth is that there is a win-win solution here if "Everyone wan'ts the house they sell to be worth more" is the only problem.
Peoples' demands are even more unreasonable: Until they sell, they want nothing in their neighborhood to change. They don't want an apartment building where their neighbor was.
It's behind a paywall. Does this disallow corporations and non-USA residents from buying property?
That works here in Switzerland sort of - prices are still super high but more because of local wealth, not Russians and Chinese buying everything. There are underdeveloped places where foreigners are allowed to buy - Andermatt for example is filled with rich Americans.
Not in any meaningful way. This would be more upsetting if corporate buyers were a significant part of the problem.
5 paragraphse of premable about the horse race. God hates actual journalism.
I need an LLM to start stripping out everything to do with this type of stupefying horse race discussion.
https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/bill_text_of_th...
The seems like a nothingburger. Going after "big bad" corporations probably feels good to voters, but (iirc) studies have shown have low/no effect.
Eliminating Fannie mae/Freddie Mac would've done a whole lot more to lower house prices.
Eliminating Fannie and Freddie would constrain the funds available for mortgage loans and prices would skyrocket.
Until about 20 years ago, both were great and valuable institutions. Long story.
Shutting them down would be a catastrophic disaster to housing affordability.
> Eliminating Fannie and Freddie would constrain the funds available for mortgage loans and prices would skyrocket
Wouldn't less mortgage money available for homes make the prices of homes drop?
Also, pretty much every apartment complex is corporate owned. At least it doesn't matter that the law doesn't do anything, because it's easily worked around by having a separate company broker purchases.
Unclear how this is going to help? A corporation can only buy 350 single family homes. Ok, so, what's to prevent making a new corporation at 349, with the same staff?
agree our condo building has the SAME question Limiting one owner to own a set number of multiple units yet what about that owners wife/cousin/son/son in law......become owners of multiple units in the same building?