Trump allowed constitutional window to close without signing or vetoing bill
The most consequential federal housing legislation in more than three decades took effect automatically late Friday after President Donald Trump allowed the 10-day constitutional window to close without signing or vetoing the bill.
The 21st Century Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act cleared the House 358-32 and the Senate 85-5 before landing on Trump's desk on June 29.
The president withheld his signature in protest over Congress's failure to advance the SAVE America Act, a voter ID measure he had set as a precondition of his support.
Under the Constitution, a bill becomes law automatically if the president takes no action within 10 days while Congress remains in session.
"I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in protest over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing the SAVE America Act," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday.
The legislation marks the first major congressional response to a housing crisis that has reshaped the American mortgage market for years.
A Bipartisan Policy Center poll conducted April 28-30, found 89% of registered voters across the political spectrum wanted Congress to act on housing costs, a signal that drove unusual bipartisan consensus through both chambers.
What the law means for brokers
Mortgage professionals will feel the law's effects across more than 40 provisions.
Among the most prominent: corporations already owning 350 or more single-family homes are now barred from acquiring additional properties, a provision designed to reduce competition between institutional capital and owner-occupant buyers.
The law also removes the permanent chassis requirement for manufactured homes — a change housing policy experts say could reduce per-unit construction costs by $5,000 to $10,000, opening access to more affordable housing types in rural and underserved markets.
The affordability math
The numbers behind the legislation underscore why Congress moved at all. The median price of an existing US home hit $440,600 in June, up 1.8% year over year from $432,700, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
A household needs roughly $117,000 annually to afford an average home on the market, according to real estate brokerage Redfin, yet US Census Bureau data shows median household income falls nearly $30,000 short of that threshold.
US housing affordability has shown incremental improvement in 2026, but the gains remain uneven, and the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate still sits around 6.5%.
Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) president and CEO Bob Broeksmit called the law a step in the right direction: "By advancing commonsense reforms that encourage housing production and improve program efficiency, Congress has demonstrated that bipartisan cooperation can deliver real results," Broeksmit said.
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