President Trump is refusing to sign the housing bill, but it will still become law on Saturday. Here's what it does - and doesn't - do.
A sprawling housing bill is on its way to becoming law, even though President Donald Trump says he won't sign it. What's in it?
A sprawling bill focused on making housing more affordable that aims to make it easier to build homes is on its way to becoming law overnight into Saturday, even as President Donald Trump says he won't sign it.
In a message on Truth Social early Friday, Trump said he wouldn't sign the measure in protest over Congress's failure to pass legislation that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship.
"I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT," Trump wrote.
Trump made no mention of a veto in his message. According to the U.S. Constitution, a bill becomes law about 10 days after it has been presented to the president, even without a signature, as long as it is not vetoed.
What the legislation does for the housing market
The bill, called the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, restricts big investors from buying single-family homes, speeds up environmental reviews for housing projects and removes restrictions on manufactured housing, among other provisions.
The legislation "won't immediately lower home prices or mortgage rates, so the main pain points for homebuyers and homeowners won't see any relief," Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com, said in statement.
'It won't immediately lower home prices or mortgage rates, so the main pain points for homebuyers and homeowners won't see any relief.'Joel Berner, economist at Realtor.com
But "over time ... especially as building is encouraged in the places that need it the most [and] the places where it's currently hard to build due to regulatory burden, supply growth can close the housing shortage," he added.
That's a welcome development, because the housing market's main problem is "a long-term structural deficit of housing that has accumulated over more than 10 years," Berner said.
Now read: The housing bill's back on track to becoming law. Here's what it does for affordability.
(Realtor.com is operated by News Corp subsidiary Move Inc.; MarketWatch publisher Dow Jones is also a subsidiary of News Corp.)
The bill's imminent enactment comes as housing affordability is front and center for many Americans. As MarketWatch reported this week, home prices hit a new all-time high this summer, and fewer people are buying homes relative to the same month last summer, when mortgage rates were even higher.
The median price for an existing home reached a new high of $440,600 in June, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. That comes on top of elevated mortgage rates.
A family earning a median household income of about $86,000 and buying a home costing about $404,000 with a 6.3% rate on a 30-year mortgage would be spending 43% of their salary on housing, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Home Ownership Affordability Monitor.
Experts doubtful about the true impact of the new housing bill
Nonetheless, some housing experts are doubtful about how much the bill will actually affect housing affordability.
For instance, even though the legislation aims to limit large investors from pricing out first-time home buyers, data has indicated that those investors have already pulled back.
So even if the bill becomes law, that part of the legislation may not be that helpful in making housing more affordable, Thom Malone, a prinicipal economist at Cotality, said in late June when the Senate passed the bill.
Hence, "the ROAD to Housing Act addresses a highly visible piece of the housing market, but not the largest one. It may provide incremental relief for some buyers, but it is unlikely to materially change the trajectory of home prices or affordability on its own," he said.
"Meaningful progress on affordability will still depend on expanding supply and addressing the structural imbalance between housing demand and availability," he added.
The legislation may also not significantly help lower-income people afford housing, Shamus Roller, chief executive of the National Housing Law Project, said in a statement in late June.
"This is progress but it is no silver bullet," he said.
"We call on Congress to go further in addressing the housing crisis for poor and working people by making significant financial investments to build new housing, including new public housing, and to pass legislation that will protect and empower tenants," Roller added. "Until there is a whole-of-government approach to save our homes and protect the people who live in them, the crisis will continue."
The bill will automatically become law Saturday in the absence of a veto by Trump. The president was set to sign it in late June but abruptly canceled the ceremony.
Shares of home builders were rising Friday. The iShares U.S. Home Construction exchange-traded fund ITB was recently up close to 2%, and components including D.R. Horton $(DHI)$, the country's largest home builder by market capitalization, along with Lennar $(LEN)$ and KB Home (KBH), were climbing in morning trading.
-Robert Schroeder -Aarthi Swaminathan
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July 10, 2026 12:47 ET (16:47 GMT)
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