​WASHINGTON — The House voted 396-13 to pass housing legislation Wednesday after two key senators said the House bill would need work to pass the Senate.

The House vote on the measure was procedurally to adopt a resolution concurring in a Senate amendment, a move that effectively swapped in House text to the bill passed by the Senate. The vote under suspension of the rules required support from two-thirds of members present and voting.

Leaders of the House Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction on the issue, were tweaking the bill up to debate on Tuesday, but the effort still left gaps between a Senate measure, primarily over the treatment of institutional investors and community banking provisions.

Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., and ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., put out a statement Wednesday ahead of the House vote that the Senate is not ready to pass the amended House bill.

“We worked closely with the White House and our colleagues in both chambers on a bill that puts families first and addresses the housing crisis,” Scott and Warren said in their joint statement. “There’s still work to be done and we are committed to continuing to work with the White House and our colleagues in the House on a housing bill that can pass the Senate and get to the President’s desk.”

The amended House bill has the backing of the Trump administration. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., posted a statement of administration policy on the social media site X that said the president would sign the legislation

“These provisions, combined with broader measures to streamline regulations and modernize federal housing policy, would increase the availability of single-family homes and promote homeownership for working families,” the SAP said.

House Financial Services Chairman French Hill, R-Ark., encouraged Scott and Warren to back the amended House bill.

“I just believe this is the best landing spot for the two chambers,” Hill told reporters after the House vote. “It reflects the priorities of both chambers, it reflects the commitment that Senator Scott and I have to a bicameral, bipartisan housing bill. I would hope they could, upon reflection, find a way to support this bill.”

Hill added: “I think there was a clear message sent to the community at large in Washington, D.C., that 390 members of the House voted to support on this consensus, narrow set of amendments to the Senate bill already passed. This is the Senate bill that we’ve simply made some modest amendments to.”

The House bill differs from the Senate bill by refusing to cap the time some institutional investors can hold properties they built to rent. The Senate would require them to sell the properties within seven years or pay a penalty. Both chambers define institutional investors as those holding 350 or more homes.

The provision is designed to prevent private equity, hedge funds and other institutional investors from gobbling up single-family homes before they can be purchased by individuals.

Hill and ranking member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said in floor debate Tuesday that the Senate text would face legal challenges.

Hill also inserted a community bank provision in the bill, language that is opposed by Warren and which could struggle to find enough Democratic support on the Senate floor to reach the 60-vote threshold needed for passage.

But House Democrats seemed satisfied with the community banking provisions being in the package. The only opposition in the floor vote were 13 Republicans who voted no.

Community banking

The House version cuts some Republican and Democratic Senate priorities, such as a permanent reauthorization of the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program; the Build Now Act, which awards CDBG funds to areas that exceed the median rate of homebuilding; a provision that would help maintain, upgrade and stabilize manufactured housing communities and a mortgage disclosure measures for veterans, said a Senate aide.

Hill defended the community banking provisions in the amended House bill. He said some banking provisions in the original House bill were removed and passed by the House last week and today.

One bill sponsored by Rep. William R. Timmons IV, R-S.C., would ease regulatory examinations on certain “well managed and well capitalized” insured depository institutions and insured credit unions with less than $6 billion in assets.

Another bill sponsored by Rep. Tim Moore, R-N.C., would increase, from $3 billion to $6 billion, the consolidated asset threshold for well-run, well-capitalized insured depository institutions to qualify for an 18-month examination cycle.

A bill sponsored by Hill would make it easier for community banks to accept custodial deposits by third parties managing them on behalf of others. An example is a landlord’s account that contains tenants’ security deposits.

A bill sponsored by Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., would amend federal deposit law to allow smaller banks to accept more reciprocal deposits without being treated as brokered deposits. Reciprocal deposits are shared among banks to increase deposit insurance coverage.

The ones that remain in the amended House bill should be able to get through the Senate, Hill said.

“We think this is a set of strongly bipartisan bills that have come out of the committee with Maxine Waters and I supporting it,” Hill told reporters. “I think there’s broad support for community banking in the Senate.”

_____

©2026 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.