The 'HOME Act' Gives HUD Power to Cap Rents and Home Prices During Declared Housing Crises

The Housing Oversight and Mitigating Exploitation Act of 2025—or the HOME Act—is designed to put a federal brake on runaway housing costs when things get truly out of hand. At its core, this bill gives the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) the power to declare an “affordable housing crisis period” based on factors like interest rates, median home prices, and median incomes (SEC. 3(a)(2)). Once that declaration is made, it becomes illegal for anyone to rent a dwelling or sell a single-family home at a price that is “unconscionably excessive” and indicates they are “exploiting the circumstances” (SEC. 3(a)(1)).

This price cap is temporary—it can only apply for 30 consecutive days at a time, though the Secretary can renew it indefinitely (SEC. 3(a)(3)). For the average person, this means that if a major economic shock or disaster hits your area and prices suddenly spike, the government can step in and temporarily stop landlords and sellers from charging absurd rates. However, the bill is pretty vague on what “unconscionably excessive” actually means, which could lead to a lot of confusion and legal wrangling for sellers and renters alike.

The Price Gouging Crackdown: Who Pays What?

If you own a rental property or are trying to sell your house during one of these crisis periods, the rules change fast. The bill sets up two key ways to determine if a price is illegal: first, if it grossly exceeds the price you were charging 30 days before the crisis was declared; and second, if it grossly exceeds the price of similar units in the same area (SEC. 3(a)(4)(B)). If you’re a landlord, this means you can’t suddenly triple the rent on your vacant unit just because the market is hot.

But there’s a crucial escape hatch: the “affirmative defense” (SEC. 3(b)). If you can prove that your price increase reasonably reflects additional costs you paid, incurred, or reasonably anticipated—say, higher insurance premiums or repair costs due to a disaster—then you haven't violated the law. This provision is meant to protect property owners from unfair penalties, but it also gives landlords and sellers a lot of room to argue that their higher price is justified by “anticipated risks,” which could be interpreted very broadly.

Watching the Big Fish: Investor Investigations

Beyond price controls, the HOME Act takes aim squarely at institutional investors—the big firms buying up thousands of single-family homes. The bill mandates that HUD establish a new Housing Monitoring and Enforcement Unit to track market manipulation and unfair practices (SEC. 5). More significantly, the Secretary must launch an investigation in any local market where a single buyer snaps up more than 5% of the available homes over three years, or where all institutional investors combined buy more than 25% of the available homes in a single year (SEC. 6).

This is a huge deal for markets where large corporate landlords have become dominant. If you’re a first-time homebuyer constantly getting outbid by cash offers from investment firms, this section is designed to shine a light on that activity and potentially regulate it. The goal is to figure out if these large purchases are driving up prices and pushing out regular families, and the bill authorizes $1 million for HUD to conduct this initial investigation and report back to Congress (SEC. 4).

Renters Get Protection from Fannie and Freddie

Finally, the bill introduces a layer of protection for renters living in apartment buildings backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt (SEC. 8). The Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is required to create new standards for these government-sponsored enterprises. These standards must include basic renter protections and, critically, must stop landlords from implementing “extreme rent hikes” on these properties. If you live in an apartment where the landlord has a federally backed mortgage, this provision is intended to prevent those sudden, massive rent increases that force people to move. This is a direct attempt to use the government’s leverage in the mortgage market to stabilize rents for millions of tenants.