HOME Act of 2025
The HOME Act of 2025 creates a national framework to curb price gouging in the rental and sale of residential housing during an officially declared affordable housing crisis. When the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) determines that the U.S. is in such a crisis, it becomes unlawful to charge unconscionably high rents or sale prices for single-family housing (1–4 units) for the duration of the crisis period, with limits on how long those prohibitions can last (generally up to 30 days at a time, renewable). The bill lays out specific factors to judge what counts as unconscionable pricing, provides an affirmative defense for legitimate cost increases or risks, and gives HUD and state attorneys general tools to enforce the rules, including penalties and potential damages to protect residents. The legislation also directs HUD to investigate pricing practices, monitor housing markets and investor activity, study unfair screening practices in housing access, and reviews anti-competitive behavior in housing markets. It further tightens supervision of large investors and multifamily housing investments and calls for a coordinated federal-state effort to address market manipulation and protect renters, especially lower-income households. In short, the HOME Act aims to detect and deter extreme price spikes in housing during crises, enforce penalties, boost transparency and monitoring, and curb practices that undermine fair access to affordable housing.
Key Points
- 1Unconscionable pricing during an affordable housing crisis
- 2- When HUD declares a crisis, it becomes unlawful to rent or sell single-family housing at prices that are unconscionably excessive and exploit the crisis. The prohibition lasts up to 30 consecutive days and can be renewed in 30-day blocks; it can also apply up to one week before a foreseeable crisis.
- 3- The Secretary uses factors such as mortgage rates, the federal funds rate, medians for rents and home prices, median income, and disaster declarations to determine the crisis and evaluate violations. Aggravating and mitigating factors (like price spikes versus prior prices and whether more units were made available) help decide violations.
- 4- There is an affirmative defense for increases that reflect higher costs or risks to rent or sell, or other justified reasons.
- 5Enforcement and penalties
- 6- HUD enforces the price-gouging prohibition similarly to how the FTC enforces consumer protection rules; state attorneys general can also sue to enforce, seek penalties, and obtain damages for residents, with notice and the possibility for HUD to intervene.
- 7- Penalties collected go to the Housing Trust Fund to help increase and preserve affordable rental housing for extremely low- and very low-income families, including homeless families.
- 8HUD investigation, monitoring, and reporting
- 9- HUD must investigate potential housing price manipulation and report within 270 days, outlining a long-term strategy to address market manipulation, including the impact of non-occupant investors and data on race, gender, and socioeconomic status.
- 10- The bill allows a data collection exception from the Paperwork Reduction Act for this effort.
- 11Housing market monitoring unit and data sharing
- 12- HUD must create a Housing Monitoring and Enforcement Unit to continuously collect and analyze rental and sale market data, including data on investor-owned, non-owner-occupied housing, and to share information with states and data sources to detect market manipulation.
- 13Monitoring of large purchases and investor activity
- 14- The Secretary will monitor single-family housing purchases and investigate if a single buyer acquires more than 5% in a market area over 3 years, or if large institutional investors buy more than 25% in 1 year. Investigations would consider price gouging, market manipulation, and other unfair investment practices.
- 15Unfair screening practices and annual reporting
- 16- The Secretary, FTC, and CFPB will jointly collect information on unfair rental screening practices (e.g., background checks, rental-app algorithms, adverse action notices, and income-source disclosures) and report findings to Congress each year.
- 17Federal housing-finance reforms
- 18- The bill adds a new section to require standards for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchases of mortgages on multifamily rental housing to protect renters and prevent egregious rent increases.
- 19Review of anti-competitive behavior
- 20- The Attorney General and FTC will jointly review anti-competitive behaviors in the single-family and rental housing markets and report within one year of enactment.