[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 22 (Friday, January 30, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S420-S421]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. REED (for himself, Ms. Smith, Mr. Blumenthal, Ms. 
        Klobuchar, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Whitehouse, Mr. Kim, Mr. Gallego, 
        Mr. Murphy, and Ms. Slotkin):
  S. 3754. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose 
a tax on the purchase of single-family homes by certain large 
investors, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, today, I am reintroducing the Affordable 
Housing and Homeownership Protection Act with Senators Smith, 
Blumenthal, Klobuchar, Baldwin, Whitehouse, Kim, Gallego, Murphy, and 
Slotkin. Our bill would provide approximately $50 billion over a decade 
to help build and preserve 2.9 million units of affordable housing and 
is fully paid for through a new tax that disincentives institutional 
investors from purchasing large numbers of single-family homes.
  Driven by a shortage of as many as 6.8 million homes nationwide, home 
prices have surged 51 percent and rents 36 percent over the last 6 
years, according to the National Association of Realtors and Zillow. 
During that same period, large investors exacerbated this shortage by 
purchasing hundreds of thousands of single-family homes across the 
United States, many of which they hold within portfolios as rentals, 
preventing more families from reaching home ownership. In the first 9 
months of 2025, around 30 percent of single-family homes on the market 
were bought by investors, not hard-working households who cannot 
compete with private equity and other large investors that can make 
all-cash offers, waive contingencies, and provide additional 
concessions.
  Institutional investor activity within the single-family housing 
market began in the wake of the great recession and accelerated during 
the COVID-19 pandemic. It has compounded other housing market pressures 
that are driving up costs, including years of underbuilding and a shift 
among developers toward building larger, more expensive homes. As a 
result, average Americans are being crowded out of home ownership. 
Researchers at Harvard University report that home prices in 2024 were 
five times the median household income--significantly higher than the 
price-to-income ratio of three that traditionally signifies an 
affordably priced housing market.
  Surging home prices and rents particularly strain moderate- and low-
income Americans. Homelessness has risen in line with housing prices 
and is up 36 percent since 2019. Unfortunately, existing Federal 
investments in low-income housing are insufficient to solve this 
affordability crisis. Indeed, in 2023, those same researchers at 
Harvard University found that the three largest

[[Page S421]]

Federal housing programs serve nearly 300,000 fewer households today 
than they did 20 years ago, while only approximately 25 percent of 
eligible households can get housing aid.
  The Affordable Housing and Homeownership Protection Act would address 
the outsize role institutional investors have in the housing market 
while also addressing the need for more housing units. It would raise 
$51 billion over a decade by taxing investors that purchase large 
numbers of single-family homes, with revenue split between the Housing 
Trust Fund, HTF, and Capital Magnet Fund, CMF, to help build and rehab 
285,000 rental units for extremely low-income Americans through HTF 
grants and help finance 2.7 million rental and home ownership units for 
low-income families via CMF, which leverages other public and private 
investments.
  In other words, our bill would help build and rehabilitate millions 
of homes for American families and boost households competing for 
single-family homes with deep-pocketed investors, all without raising 
the deficit. This is a commonsense, fair proposal that tackles perhaps 
our Nation's largest challenge.
  I am encouraged that President Trump has caught on to the fact that 
institutional investors are, in his words, ``crowding out families 
seeking to buy homes.'' He added in a recent Executive order ``that 
large institutional investors should not buy single-family homes that 
could otherwise be purchased by families.'' This is the very issue that 
the Affordable Housing and Homeownership Protection Act seeks to 
address, so I hope that we can build bipartisan support for its 
passage.
  I thank the bill's endorsers--the National Low Income Housing 
Coalition, National Housing Law Project, National Consumer Law Center 
on behalf of its low-income clients, Americans for Financial Reform, 
and Consumer Action--and urge my colleagues to support this important 
legislation.

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