With the U.S. Congress and the Trump administration looking to support American residential housing affordability by limiting the role of “large institutional investors,” WERC is calling upon talent mobility practitioners to engage with their members of Congress and urge them to ensure that any definition of the term does not unintentionally include the ability of employers to administer and offer home sale programs for relocating employees.
WERC is actively engaging with Congressional offices on this issue, but organizations and individuals across the talent mobility industry also need to reach out to their Congressional offices to share the importance of ensuring that relocation home sale programs are not unintentionally pulled into scope.
Background
On 20 January 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a presidential proclamation, Stopping Wall Street from Competing with Main Street Homebuyers, focused on addressing U.S. residential housing inventory levels and affordability by restricting large institutional investors and their purchasing of single family homes. In his State of the Union address on 24 February, President Trump urged Congress to pass legislation advancing these restrictions into law, and on 2 March 2026, the U.S. Senate voted to advance for consideration H.R. 2261 (“21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing affordability bill that included amendments adding new legislative language addressing institutional investors.
Although these efforts are focused specifically on institutional investors, the definitions around investors contained within the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act are broad enough that they could unintentionally result in relocation-related home sale programs being pulled into scope depending on how the law is applied. This is due to the nature of home sale programs, which for decades has been a move-related support option available to many moving employees in both the private sector and the U.S. government.
In order for these home sale programs to adhere to existing IRS requirements, the employer must, either directly or via a third-party servicing entity such as a relocation management company, temporarily acquire the moving employee’s property solely for the purposes of facilitating the employee’s relocation. Many U.S. employers can have hundreds of moving employees each year with residential properties connected with their company’s home sale program offered to relocating employees. This results in relocation management companies frequently having, depending on the time of year, hundreds of residential properties or more actively in some stage of the home sale process at any particular point in time.
How to Get Involved
Engage with Your Member of Congress: Utilize the linked template letter below to message your representative and senators about protecting the home sale program. Instructions on how to submit are included in the template below.
View letter template and instructions
Encourage Companies to Engage their Government Relations Teams: WERC encourages mobility practitioners whose company (or their client companies that they support) utilize home sale programs as part of their mobility/relocation program to alert their government affairs teams of this issue and to share what the ramifications might be for the company. We also encourage you to connect your government affairs teams with WERC so they can stay directly engaged and informed as this moves forward.
Questions?
Contact Mike Jackson, WERC’s vice president of public policy and research, or Tracy Taylor, WERC’s external lobbyist.