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If you’ve been struggling with rising rents, stalled home searches, or the feeling that homeownership is slipping further out of reach, you’re not alone. The U.S. is short an estimated 4 million units, and the affordability index remains near historic lows. Even with more listings hitting the market, sales are slowing and families are feeling the squeeze.
And Washington is trying to respond. A series of very different housing plans is now on the table that could directly affect your options.
Earlier this year, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tim Scott (R-SC) teamed up to introduce the ROAD to Housing Act of 2025—a sprawling bipartisan package that aims to lower costs by getting more homes built, modernizing financing, and tightening oversight. The proposal builds on Warren’s reintroduction of her American Housing and Economic Mobility Act earlier this year, a bill she has been advocating for since at least 2018.
Meanwhile, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is pitching the No Tax on Home Sales Act, which takes a simpler route: eliminating capital gains taxes on the sale of primary residences, a proposal President Donald Trump has said he’s considering.
For everyday buyers, sellers, and renters, the question isn’t just what these bills say—but how they might help them. Will they make it easier to find an affordable home? Free up more listings? Or leave first-time buyers behind?
The ROAD ahead
The ROAD to Housing Act of 2025 is less a single idea than a sprawling blueprint for tackling the housing crisis on multiple fronts. But at its core, the package tries to do three big things: expand supply, improve access, and tighten accountability.
“Since taking over as Ranking Member in 2023, I pledged to make housing a top priority and put forward commonsense reforms to reverse decades of failed housing policies,” Scott said in a press release for the bill. “This is a collaborative effort that includes the work of my colleagues across the committee, and I look forward to advancing these solutions to the full Senate.”
“With this historic bipartisan bill, we are taking a critical first step to bring down families’ number one monthly expense—housing costs,” Warren said in a press release.
The bill leans heavily on getting more homes built by creating new incentives for local governments to cut red tape and streamline environmental reviews for small and infill projects. Also, it creates an Innovation Fund that communities can tap for infrastructure, housing, or even schools.
These initiatives could benefit renters and hopeful house hunters alike, as more supply will go far to help alleviate the historic shortage that the U.S. is currently facing. In July, just 621,000 single-family homes were under construction nationwide—down nearly 4% from a year earlier. Builder confidence has also slipped, with 32 of the top 100 metro areas seeing declining new-home prices.
And yet, the package aims to do more than just build. It is also aimed at opening the door wider for buyers and renters through a variety of creative measures, including modernizing financing rules for modular and manufactured housing and expanding access to small-dollar mortgages.
Veterans would also see new protections and transparency around VA loan options, while rural communities gain from reforms to the USDA’s housing programs and joint HUD-USDA reviews to cut duplicative paperwork. Together, these are meant to spread the reach of federal housing support beyond the nation’s metro hubs.
“Finally, some good news: a bipartisan bill, ‘ROAD to Housing Act,’ is making some legislative headway,” Mark Zandi, Moody’s chief economist, wrote on X. “It’s no game-changer, but policymakers are finally in the game.”
“Creating a set of standards for zoning could be helpful to bring attention to the issues facing many local markets,” adds Realtor.com® senior economist Joel Berner. The caveat is that the effectiveness of the bill would ultimately come down to how local municipalities adopt and implement the changes.
How it builds on Warren’s previous proposal
The bipartisan approach builds on Warren’s reintroduction of the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act earlier this year—an ambitious plan to dramatically expand the nation’s housing supply that was core to the senator’s 2020 presidential run.
A 2024 independent analysis from Moody’s estimates the bill would build or rehabilitate 3 million homes over the next decade, enough to cut rents for working- and middle-class families by about 10%, or roughly $140 a month in savings for the average family.
To pay for the effort, the legislation would roll back estate tax thresholds to pre-Bush-era levels, close existing loopholes, and introduce more progressive rates for the wealthiest households. Supporters argue this makes the plan fully paid for while asking only the richest families to contribute.
Beyond construction, the proposal layers in a suite of policies designed to open up access and keep prices in check. It offers down payment assistance to first-time and first-generation buyers, expands VA loan eligibility to descendants of certain veterans, and creates grants for communities struggling with appraisal gaps.
“Housing means dignity, safety, and security, and as a Senator who grew up in public housing, I know that strengthening housing availability and affordability is critical to helping folks establish a solid foundation to build a healthy future,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said in a press release for the bill, of which he is a co-sponsor. “That is why I am proud to fight for this transformational legislation that will unleash construction of millions of new homes and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the process.”
If it seems like deja vu, it’s because many of these initiatives found their way into the newer ROAD act, albeit through different mechanisms.
What about other ideas?
For all its ambition, the ROAD to Housing Act is sprawling—315 pages of programs, frameworks, and reforms. The housing crisis is equally complex, but that complexity makes sweeping legislation hard to implement.
The No Tax on Home Sales Act, by contrast, offers a single, clear change: eliminate the federal capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences. The logic is simple: Remove a penalty that traps long-term owners in place, and you free up inventory.
Roughly 1 in 3 homeowners has built up more equity than today’s capital gains exclusion for single filers protects, putting nearly 29 million households at risk of a tax bill as high as 20% when they sell. For retirees, the stakes are especially punishing. Seniors who exceed the cap face average liabilities north of $41,000, money they often need for health care, long-term care, or to simply make retirement sustainable.
“The tax was never meant to be a penalty on homeownership, but that’s exactly how it functions today. A homeowner shouldn’t be taxed like a speculator,” Shannon McGahn, executive vice president and chief advocacy officer for the National Association of Realtors® told Realtor.com in July.
In that light, the bill reads like an elegant fix that lets empty nesters and retirees keep more of their hard-earned equity while unlocking homes for the next generation. But its limits are clear. By padding existing owners’ buying power, the bill risks widening the affordability gap for first-time buyers, who already face a historically low market share.
While the No Tax on Home Sales Act would go a long way to helping current homeowners, it doesn’t solve the broader challenge of how to make first homes attainable in the first place.
Why we need solutions now
Even as builders have delivered more new homes to the market, the pace isn’t enough to close the gap in the U.S. housing supply.
New construction is helping at the margins: The price premium for new homes over existing ones has fallen to just 7.8%, the lowest on record, and in many markets—particularly in the South—new homes are now cheaper per square foot than existing listings.
But these gains are uneven. Southern states account for more than half of all new listings, while regions like the Northeast remain severely constrained, leaving buyers there with few options.
The Realtor.com state-by-state report card underscores the divide. States in the South and Midwest earned the only top marks, thanks to stronger affordability and more permissive homebuilding. By contrast, the West and Northeast fared the worst, dragged down by restrictive zoning, high land costs, and entrenched barriers to construction.
Massachusetts, for example, earned a failing grade, with zoning codes so fragmented and restrictive that more than half the land allows only single-family housing.
Taken together, the data points to the same conclusion: The market alone isn’t fixing the shortage fast enough. Rents remain elevated, homelessness is rising, and home sales have stalled despite more listings coming online. That’s the urgent context in which Warren, Scott, Greene, and Warnock are pitching their potential fixes—and one that demands more than just tweaking incentives but a solution that will tackle the problem head-on.