The Landlord Lens - The Biggest Housing Reform in Decades Passed Without Trump's Signature

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

A major housing reform has officially become law—and surprisingly, it did so without President Trump's signature.In this episode of Landlord Lens, we break down what happened, why the bill became law this way, and what the new legislation could mean for landlords, property owners, renters, and the future of housing policy in the United States.Whether you own rental properties, invest in real estate, or simply want to stay ahead of the latest housing news, we'll walk you through the biggest changes, separate the headlines from reality, and discuss what to watch moving forward.

So there's a lot of interesting stuff happening that I didn't even know we had regulations for that are being lifted in this bill. Yeah, it's incredible when you start to kind of peel back the layers of the bill. You realize, oh, this is why builders have chose not to participate. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Landlord Lens. This is a big one. We have a lot of news to share. Did you hear the news, Seamus? You know what? I actually did hear the news this time. What's the news? The news is the housing bill passed.

Oh, so Trump signed it? Well, no. And I think a masterclass political move, he didn't sign it. He decided to do nothing. And he'll get the win for the administration without actually having to compromise on some of the things that we're holding it up. Right. And in two, three years, if it doesn't work, he didn't sign it. Yeah, exactly.

But that might be another video. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. Yeah. Everything's changed. Everything's changed. Tomorrow, housing prices will be impacted on Zillow. Yes. I'm both terrified because my mortgage is going to be underwater, but I'm excited because I'm going to go buy a new home. Oh, yes. Exactly. You can get a house for 80,000 now.

Price of a VCR, I heard in some places. It took us 15 years to get into this affordability challenge. It's not going to immediately drop off a cliff. We're not going to see housing prices drop off a cliff super fast. If anything, we think it's going to be a pretty gradual change anyway. Yeah, absolutely. And the reason we've kind of got to where we are right now, a lot of it's stemming back to a big event in 2008. Yeah, something happened in 2008. It's Bear Stearns. What did that impact? I saw a Netflix documentary on Bernie Madoff. Did that have anything to do it? Yeah, I think Bernie actually kicked off the whole thing. No, it was the subprime mortgage crisis that tanked the housing market. And as housing prices dropped, not only did it impact a bunch

a parsons of the economy, it basically massively de-incentivized builders to build. Their profit margins shrunk significantly, and they had less reason to build in a lot of different places and a lot of different things. Yeah, not only did the builders have less of a reason to build that supply that we needed, people also started to take a stance of, I'd rather you not build near me. Yes, exactly, which had always been around, but especially after 08, its impact was much louder. because so few developments were actually happening, right? If you stop, you know, 60% of plan developments and there's 100 versus 60% of plan developments and there's 20, it has a much larger impact on the housing market overall and supply available.

Yeah, I think what's happened both locally and a little bit federally is the NIMBYism, right? Not in my backyard was weaponized through regulation. Yep. A lot of which I think was dressed up as environmental concern. and this bill does hope to address that, but it needs to be addressed in most situations on a local level, not the federal level. Yes, which the bill does have a lot of provisions

of block grants that are tied to local regulation changes that would enable more development, right? And basically take less of the organizational weight of a local government from the NIMBY's and over to the developer, which makes sense, but they're still going to have, you know, NIMBYs are still going to have, you know, win in a lot of places. Yeah, I really hope that the fact that this was such a bipartisan win across

the board does seep down into those local political elections. And you have candidates saying, okay, what is happening here on the national stage, this popular stance of making it easier to build supply is worth me running on. Right. And that, I think, is, well, the grants will help locally. I think that is the big hope that there's the shifting of wind, shifting of tides in the government that says it's worth it for us to make building housing supply easy. Yes. And I think it's important, though, that that becomes the conversation around this bill is, like, remember when Obamacare passed, which was highly partisan when it passed. And there was a lot of conversation in red states about taking on that Medicare expansion money. And a lot of them didn't and ran on it.

But that was partisan, right? Maybe this being not partisan, and ideally the story shifts from this institutional buyer stuff, we'll talk about in a sec, and more towards these housing availability and affordability measures that will actually impact it, such that there is pressure at the local election level for folks to verbally commit to taking some of this money and deregulating their own housing markets. Absolutely. And if you look close enough in your own locality, you probably see this type of NIMIism making a huge impact. Got lots of stories of it actually up in Fort Collins, where I live. Yeah. Where the same individuals that want housing affordability also want to make sure that that affordable housing doesn't in any way ruin their view of the front range. Exactly.

Yeah. And, you know, Lakewood, Colorado, we have that. In southeast Denver, we've got the whole. Prairie dogs. Prairie dogs, yes. the prairie dogs, right, that are constantly cited to stop development. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be really interesting to see how those items play out and whether they get taken or not. There's a lot of deregulatory stuff, not just related to environment stuff or nature stuff.

There's also like a bunch of safety regulations that were put in place that are kind of being questioned. Modular homes is one, right? The modular homes, I had no idea until I read this bill, are super regulated. like you have to build them a certain way and a certain materials and everything and a lot of those regulations were removed. So modular homes and therefore like standalone single family

can be cheaper to build. And then the second one, which again, never thought about in Europe and in like old New York, old Boston, you see a lot of apartment buildings that are, you know, in New York we call them walkups. There's just one staircase that services a bunch of apartments.

A lot cheaper to build, a lot easier to build. But large, illegal to build in America for the last 30 years. Those are now getting pushed to be allowed, right, tied to those regulation grants again. So there's a lot of interesting stuff happening that I didn't even know we had regulations for that are being lifted in this bill. Yeah, it's incredible when you start to kind of peel back the layers of the bill. You realize, oh, this is why builders have chose not to participate, right? or this is why the complexity of building new supply has made it so damn expensive,

where it was very easy, I think previously to think like, oh, builders just want to make more money. Yeah. So they're charging more, right? But you see the ripple effect of this regulation. And so as that starts to dissipate, what can we expect to see, let's say, if we fast forward a year? The hope is that this shows up, like you said, in the local election conversation. people should be taking stances on this because there's a bunch of money pent up right at the federal level ready to be deployed in in your municipality if you're an American right that's ready to go are you talking to your government about it are you asking them what are they going to do about it those sorts of conversations need to be happening at the local level to really unlock that money to flow into your locality and also you know change the environment so people start building yeah and if you're in

one of the locations that has had a lot of institutional activity, you actually may see one last participant around the table when it comes to offers, because this bill is the bill we've talked about, right, that officially limits institutional buyers of existing properties. Yeah, so the people that own 350 or more single-family homes are not going to be allowed basically to buy anymore. They can still do build to rent, and they can do multifamily. And that was something that In previous videos, when we've talked about this bill, I think we both agreed was important to allow them to do because it is a way in which more supply comes online. Right.

And the individual doesn't have the funds to bring that supply on themselves. Exactly. Yeah, it kind of unlocks or keeps unlocked and then unlocks two important segments of the developer market. So we can see more supply come online. So the takeaway here, right, is new housing bill. Yep. It's trying to do a lot to unlock new supply and build it through things like local grants and some deregulation.

It also is removing one of the potential buyers, which is the institutional buyer. You'll hopefully start seeing changes to zoning and regulation in your backyard so that your local municipality can unlock these grants. Yeah. But it's not going to make a huge change tomorrow. In fact, if it started to shift the wins a year from now, I think that would be a pretty big win. Yeah, agreed. It's kind of like a, you know, if a farmer puts in a new irrigation system, they don't expect their corn to sprout tomorrow. They just expect more corn to sprout in the next growing season. And that's kind of what this bill does is it changes the conditions of the housing market in such a way that should encourage supply. And something we won't see immediately, but ideally, depending on how the work gets done in your area, shows up in the next year, two years. Love it. Well, you know, big praise out there to the Senate, the House. They did. something. Yeah, they passed. This is the biggest, we didn't talk about it, but it is the biggest

housing law passed since Reagan. Like, this is huge. Yeah, it's wild, bipartisan. Good to see the people at the White House getting something done. That's right. Yeah, good to see someone get something done up there. Is there something about the housing bill that you're excited about that we didn't bring up? Please leave a comment. And as always, like and subscribe. Have a good one. TurboTenant is the all-in-one platform for landlords to manage their rental properties. From vacancy to tenancy, we have you covered with industry-leading tools and expert advice. Landlord better from anywhere for free at turbotenant.com.