Congress has enacted the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, allowing it to become law over the weekend without President Trump’s signature. In a special report, Marcus & Millichap characterizes the legislation as one of the most consequential federal housing reform efforts in decades, noting that it reflects a rare bipartisan convergence around the need to address the nation’s housing affordability challenges. While the firm views the bill as a meaningful policy milestone, it also underscores that core structural constraints on construction and homeownership are likely to remain.
Marcus & Millichap’s assessment emphasizes that the law is best understood as an incremental step rather than a sweeping fix. The firm points out that the institutional single-family and multifamily owners targeted by some of the act’s provisions account for only about 3% of the overall housing market. In recent comments to CNBC, president and CEO Hessam Nadji said this limited scope constrains the bill’s potential impact on affordability, suggesting that changes affecting such a small share of the housing stock cannot, on their own, materially shift pricing or supply-demand dynamics across the country.
The special report further notes that no single provision in the act appears to be transformative when considered in isolation. Instead, Marcus & Millichap argues that the law’s significance lies in its combined set of reforms, which are designed to incrementally reduce barriers to both for-sale housing and multifamily development. The firm expects any benefits to emerge gradually as multiple policy adjustments take effect over time, rather than through a dramatic near-term change in market conditions.
According to the analysis, the ROAD to Housing Act addresses four main categories of constraint that have hampered new supply. On the regulatory front, the legislation aims to streamline federal reviews, provide resources to help local governments administer planning functions, and link certain grant funding to demonstrated increases in housing production. Marcus & Millichap suggests that, if implemented effectively, these measures could ease some of the procedural bottlenecks that slow or deter new projects.
The act also seeks to improve financing access for affordable housing, multifamily developments, and community-focused projects, signaling targeted support for segments of the capital stack that are critical to new rental construction. In addition, it includes provisions to modernize federal housing programs, with the dual goal of preserving existing affordable units and facilitating the delivery of new supply. Finally, the legislation promotes factory-built housing solutions such as manufactured, modular, and offsite construction as potentially lower-cost alternatives to traditional methods, which could help expand options for both developers and residents.
Overall, Marcus & Millichap describes the ROAD to Housing Act as a modest but constructive shift in federal housing policy. While the firm remains cautious about the scale of its direct impact on affordability, given the narrow share of the market explicitly targeted, it concludes that the law nonetheless marks a step in the right direction for for-sale and multifamily housing production.
