'democrats Had A Chance': How Both Parties Are Gearing Up To Claim A Bipartisan Housing Victory

Both parties and both chambers of Congress banded together this week to pass a landmark housing affordability package, the product of long, complex and delicate negotiations between the House, Senate and White House.

Now Democrats and Republicans have about four months to figure out ways to use it against each other.

Ahead of November’s midterm elections, Democrats think that with the cost-of-living crisis — made worse by President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran and roil energy markets — they could score some seats in the Senate and potentially flip the House, with the housing bill as an additional boost to their messaging.

They were able to secure some significant priorities in the legislation, including a populist policy that would restrict large investors from purchasing more than 350 single-family homes. Such a ban, aimed at private equity firms, has long been a priority of Senate Banking’s top Democrat, Elizabeth Warren, but also garnered support from Trump.

“This bill helps us demonstrate our commitment to bringing down costs,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview. “We’re not in the majority, but we got in there and fought for 47 different provisions to lower costs for American families and to beat back private equity, and we made it happen. That’s a pretty big win.”

But Republicans have their own selling points for the bill, which aims to increase affordability by boosting the housing supply. First and foremost, it got done under the governance of a Republican trifecta. The legislation will be signed into law on Wednesday.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), a member of Senate Banking, said former Sen. Sherrod Brown was the chair of the committee for four years and “he didn’t get shit done on housing.”

“It took [Senate Banking Chair] Tim Scott and Republicans to get the bill across the finish line. Democrats had a chance,” Moreno said. “They could have done it. They didn’t. It just shows their priorities.”

The bill’s passage comes as both parties enter a critical stretch ahead of elections in which affordability has been a top issue for voters. The bipartisan outcome, a collaborative product of dozens of back-and-forth exchanges and versions of text among all four corners of Congress resulting in almost 60 provisions, stands in contrast to a deeply polarized Washington.

But even with Democrats and Republicans coming together to pass the legislation, both parties will need to campaign on how they are making life more affordable.

Trump seemed to undercut GOP messaging by downplaying the legislation, arguing in a Truth Social post Wednesday that the “Warren centric housing bill” was “of minor importance compared to lower interest rates.”

Even so, the GOP is hanging on to a two-seat majority in the House and a narrow majority in the Senate, and Republicans hope voters remember what they accomplished.

“This bill shows House Republicans are focused on lowering costs and expanding opportunity,” said House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.), one of the key architects of the legislation. “These are the kinds of results that matter to families — and they’re the kinds of results voters will remember in the midterm elections.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are using the theme of housing to underscore their message that economic uncertainty is making everything less affordable and hurting American families.

“Trump’s destructive tariffs and reckless war with Iran have increased housing costs, and his administration is gutting affordable housing programs, underfunding rental assistance for families in need, and asking families to do more with less,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Democrats will continue to show the American people there is only one party that is fighting to lower costs and improve their lives.”

While Democrats and Republicans duke it out over messaging, there’s still a huge barrier to housing affordability far outside the scope of the newly passed legislation: The cost of borrowing to buy a home isn’t likely to ease, with inflation and rising government debt loads helping to push up long-term rates.

The current average national 30-year fixed mortgage rate is 6.47 percent and has not dipped below 6 percent since 2022, the year inflation peaked under the Biden administration.

Even with potential positive momentum on the housing market from the housing bill’s supply focus, mortgage rates remain the biggest factor impacting homeowners’ calculus on whether to move, due to both the direct effect on cost and the indirect effect of people comparing their current mortgage rate to the new rate they would have to pay, Zillow chief economist Mischa Fisher said.

Those high mortgage costs don’t necessarily tell the whole story. Affordability, despite the run up in rates, is still a bit better than last year because incomes have also risen alongside higher borrowing costs, Fisher said. But that’s a difficult political message to sell.

“Spent value has been flat, but you double the monthly mortgage payment and you raise incomes by a third, that's going to create a profound sense of whiplash in people,” Fisher said. “I think that's what drives the frustration.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday evening acknowledged that bringing costs down is “a tough problem.”

“It is going to take lower rates and more supply,” he said.

For her part, Warren said high rates are even more a reason that the housing bill is critical.

“Trump policies are driving up costs from construction through financing, and this bill is a pushback against those increases,” she said in an interview.

Rep. Josh Harder (D-Calif.), co-chair of the bipartisan Build America Caucus, said he had some concerns that rates remaining high could undercut some of the bill’s effectiveness, but hoped that the bill’s enactment would create momentum for more legislation “to unlock more financing to make housing more affordable."

Michael Stratford contributed to this report.