Federal, state and local legislatures introduced a tremendous amount of housing-related legislation over the past year, with hundreds of bills considered across the country and several passed into law. 

This trend is sure to continue in the new year when the Trump administration takes office, according to Greg Brown, senior vice president of governmental affairs at the National Apartment Association. 

“In my lifetime, I've never seen housing occupy such a central place in the [presidential] debate,” Brown said. “I think it's safe to say that never have two presidential candidates spent so much time talking about housing in such an explicit way.”

Foremost on the minds of lawmakers, constituents and multifamily professionals is housing affordability and the policies that could make it possible. These potential regulations vary widely in scope, from rent control to tax incentives for developers. 

“They wouldn't be talking about housing if it wasn't on the minds of the people,” Brown told Multifamily Dive. “And that means the constituents for every member of the Senate, every member of the House, at some level, have been talking about housing. So I think that's going to translate to some real activity around this in both the House and the Senate.”

Here’s what the industry can expect in the new year on each of multifamily policy’s biggest topics:

The new administration’s agenda

The key points of President-elect Donald Trump’s housing plan, according to the National Apartment Association, include:

• Reducing mortgage rates, lowering inflation and opening federal land to new home construction.
• Tax incentives and support for first-time buyers.
• Cuts to housing regulations, which would make housing less expensive to build.
• A ban on mortgages for undocumented immigrants.

Efforts to reduce regulation could make it easier for builders to add homes and apartments at lower price points, said Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale in a release shared with Multifamily Dive. 

“These ideas could help builders make headway on the housing shortage that has largely only widened over the last decade,” Hale said.

However, Trump’s policies could also make building new apartments more expensive. For example, new tariffs on imported materials could lead to higher material costs, Michael Guckes, chief economist at Cincinnati-based ConstructConnect, told Construction Dive.

The new administration’s curtails on immigration could make also apartment construction labor more difficult to find. “In the short-run, reducing immigration could severely hurt the labor supply needed for new home building,” Hale said, “since up to a third of residential construction employment consists of foreign-born workers.”

Opportunity Zones on the horizon

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 introduced the Opportunity Zone system, offering tax incentives for investment in distressed areas — including multifamily development. The incoming administration appears primed to support and expand on this program. 

Trump’s pick to lead HUD, Scott Turner, led the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, which coordinated Opportunity Zone investment, under former HUD Secretary Ben Carson. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the original author of the Opportunity Zone legislation, has been elected to serve as the chairman of both the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Banking Committee in the new Congress.

In his position, Scott could modify or expand on the existing program, according to Brown. “He's going to want to see some tweaks to [Opportunity Zones],” Brown said. “There's some improvements that folks want to make there. He's going to want to see some additional work done.”

He noted that Scott has his own housing bill in play, the ROAD to Housing Act, which would, among other changes to operations in HUD, require the agency to prioritize grant awards to recipients in Opportunity Zones. “He’s already on the record on these things,” Brown said. 

States to watch for rent control

President Joe Biden’s appeal to Congress in July to cap rent increases at the federal level is very unlikely to progress, according to Brown. “I think that his foray into that in the summer was purely a political play,” Brown said. “I don’t think, at the federal level, [that] rent control is going to enter the conversation.”

Much of the action on rent control legislation in 2025 is expected to come from states, with Washington and Illinois as locations to watch, according to Brown. He notes that both states defeated rent control bills this year — SB3484 in Illinois, which would have repealed the state’s Rent Control Preemption Act, and HB2114 in Washington, which would have established rent control among other landlord-tenant changes. 

Brown expects rent control bills to come back in both of these states. “Illinois and Washington seem to be the most likely candidates, and I think we'll just have to wait and see where else people try to toy with it,” he said. 

The NAA’s list of states to watch for rent control policy this year also includes:

• California.
• Colorado.
• Maryland. 
• Michigan.
• Nevada.
• New Jersey.
• Pennsylvania.
• Virginia.

New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland are new to the list, replacing Hawaii, Connecticut and Massachusetts from 2024.

Legislative action

There were three multifamily housing bills in play in last year’s Congress that the NAA supported throughout the year: 

• The Respect State Housing Laws Act, which would have repealed the CARES Act — a requirement that housing providers must give 30 days’ notice of an eviction. 
• The Yes In My Back Yard Act, meant to remove local barriers to housing development.
• The Choice in Affordable Housing Act, which would have reformed the Section 8 program in order to encourage landlord participation.

Since these three bills did not pass last year, they would need to be reintroduced in order to be considered again. Brown expects to see these bills return this year, though he anticipates that the new congressional leaders may want to provide more input on the structure of the Choice in Affordable Housing Act. 

“It's a lot of moving parts in Section 8. A lot of people have opinions about what needs to be done there,” Brown said. “YIMBY and Respect State Housing laws are pretty simple, straightforward pieces of legislation, so I would not anticipate so much change in those. But in the case of all three, we're going to be looking for introduction and pursuing passage.”

Junk fee regulations

On Dec. 17, the Federal Trade Commission enacted its Junk Fees Rule, which in its final form requires the event ticketing and short-term rental industries to include all mandatory fees in their advertised pricing. 

The initial proposal for the junk fee rule, published in October 2023, applied these requirements to all industries. The final rule does not directly address the multifamily industry, but the FTC stated in its news release that the commission will continue to pursue cases in other industries independent of this rule. It also encouraged state and local governing bodies to ban junk fees in their jurisdictions.

On Dec. 10, Trump picked Federal Trade Commissioner Andrew Ferguson as the new chair of the FTC, effective once his administration begins. Ferguson was the only dissenter in the 4-1 vote to approve the junk fee rule.

As it stands, the rule will take effect 120 days after its publication in the Federal Register, or April 2025 at the earliest.