Will the landmark 21st Century Road to Housing Act make Arizona homes cheaper?

Article originally posted on HERE on July 13, 2026

It’s rare that Democrats and Republicans in Washington agree on much of anything these days. But the so-called 21st Century Road to Housing Act has been celebrated by both parties as the most significant housing legislation in decades.

At the same time, President Donald Trump called it a — quote — “big yawn” and said he wouldn’t sign it unless Congress passed his signature voter ID bill — the SAVE America Act.

Well, that hasn’t happened and the president didn’t sign the housing law, but now, it’s become law without his signature or veto after passing the 10-day waiting period with no action from the president.

The new law is aimed at housing affordability mainly by encouraging more homebuilding. And Tina Tamboer said it could be as significant as lawmakers think. Tamboer is a senior housing analyst for the Cromford Report.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Tina. Thanks for coming in.

TINA TAMBOER: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so there is a lot in this law. It’s like 40 provisions. But I want to just start with a lay of the land question about how unaffordable housing has become. I think for a long time we’ve thought of the Valley, the Phoenix metro area, as an affordable place to live. Is it?

TINA TAMBOER: Well … it’s getting slowly better. And so we did hit a very uncomfortable place right around 2021, ’22, when prices went very high along with mortgage rates that caused many people, even married couple families, which are generally the highest income families, to start wincing at the cost of a payment. And so since then, though, we have definitely seen our incomes rise. We rose about 32% to 35% in our median household income for almost all of our segments from 2020 to 2024. If we assume that that has continued on, then we can assume that our affordability is gradually getting better, but it’s certainly not perfect.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, OK. So broadly, what’s your take on this bill? Do you think it will be impactful?

TINA TAMBOER: I think it will be impactful in the future. So when we look at — let’s just take the one piece that was pretty, I guess, controversial, which was the investor ownership side of things. Limiting institutional investors to no more than 350 homes across the nation will definitely keep them from making the party in housing too ruckus, too loud.

So that’s kind of what happened in 2021 when Wall Street gets starry-eyed over the potential of housing. When they see shortages, they see profits. And when they go in, they tend to overshadow anybody who’s actually just trying to buy a home. They have a lot of cash, and they really drove up prices quite a bit in ’21 and ’22.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so it’s been a couple years since then. Has the party with investors, Wall Street buying up houses, died down?

TINA TAMBOER: Yes, well the party was definitely shut down when mortgage rates went up to 8%. That really shut that party down. We did see a correction in 2022. And since then, really, the prices have been flat. We have seen very little appreciation. If we go into the lower price ranges, we’ve seen definitely a decline. We’ve been in a buyer’s market for two years.

So prices are already drifting down in many of our most affordable price ranges, specifically under [$300,000], and in some cases under [$400,000], especially if you have a condo. Single-family have held their values a little bit more. But the reality is that we also have to be careful, because if they’re going to incentivize new supply, we are currently not in the resale market in an … under-supply situation. So if you add too many homes too fast, then you cause depreciation and you will hurt more homeowners than you help, because they won’t be able to sell their home and afford all of the expenses associated with that.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So the housing market is always about supply and demand, about kind of keeping a balance.

TINA TAMBOER: Yes.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. OK. So let’s talk about some of the ways in which this housing legislation could in the future maybe affect that balance, because it’s trying to kind of spur developers, cut some red tape, things like allowing developers to skip environmental reviews in certain cases. How big of a dent could those kind of things make?

TINA TAMBOER: I think it could definitely help builders catch up. So if say, for instance, we see even a half-point drop in mortgage rates and improving that affordability to getting closer and closer to normal, you’ll see demand pick up. And when demand picks up, then builders are under more pressure to build those homes faster or accommodate. So removing some of that red tape really does give them more flexibility to adjust to changes in the marketplace like that in terms of demand.

LAUREN GILGER: But you don’t want to overbuild, basically.

TINA TAMBOER: We’ve already experienced the overbuilding consequences. If you look at 2004 and 2005, you can see what the after-effects of 2008 can happen, especially if you’re overbuilding because there’s too much demand because Wall Street at that time was investing in mortgages.

So like I said, anytime Wall Street gets involved and they want to make your party a little louder, a little more debauchery going on, there’s usually going to be some form of correction in terms of a shutdown. And years later, you will get some form of legislation. And so we’ve seen this now cycle twice. And the last time this happened during the 2008 crash, we got the Dodd-Frank Act, if you remember, which was a very harsh crackdown on lending. And so this time around, the party was brought on by Wall Street investing in the houses themselves, and now we have a piece of legislation years later cracking down on investors.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, last minute here for you, Tina. How much can federal legislation like this make an impact? Does local zoning generally have more impact on housing than something federally?

TINA TAMBOER: I think the federal government only has but so many tools in their tool shed. And so when it comes down to really affecting how the federal incentives are implemented, it’s going to be on your local side of things. And so that’s where our professionals here in the Valley really have the ear of the Legislature to ensure that these incentives and these rules go where they belong and actually help the people that truly need it.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, we’ll leave it there. Tina Tamboer, senior housing analyst for the Cromford Report, joining us. Tina, thank you for coming in, appreciate it.

TINA TAMBOER: My pleasure.