Weekly Housing Trends

The big story

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With no presidential signature and minimal fanfare, the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law on Saturday. Here’s what’s worth knowing.

A crackdown on big investors

The law caps large investors at 350 single-family homes—which could tip the odds in the bidding war back toward the little guys. “For everyone below that threshold, this law is a gift: It handcuffs the deepest-pocketed bidder,” says Marcus Williams, a personal finance writer at BanksMobile. “A bill rarely picks winners this clearly. Small investors won, mega-landlords lost.”

Although institutional investors own roughly 3% of the single-family rental homes nationwide, their presence tops 20% in some cities, like Jacksonville, FL. That means the law’s impact will vary by area; mom-and-pops should expect a fresh edge on entry-level single-family homes in the Sun Belt and other institution-heavy metros. Justin Mitchell at Real Estate Bees in Maryland often battled hedge-fund buyers. But now that they’ve been reined in, he says, “I’m expecting a little more room to bid.”

Less red tape for new builds

The legislation’s objective? Get more homes built fast by streamlining the approval process. This prospect excites Mitch Coluzzi, an investor at SoldFast in Des Moines, IA, whose recent proposal to build 31 units on 6.5 empty acres hit snags during community review.

“We were shot down without a real conversation: They publicly claim the city has a housing crisis and ask for housing, but not here,” he recalls. “When a project meets every code aspect and still dies at the council—that’s the bottleneck this law is built to squeeze.”

A manufactured housing boom

Manufactured homes (built in factories and shipped to the lot) just got easier to build now that ROAD scrapped a slew of requirements, like the need for a steel chassis underneath. “Eliminating the chassis is projected to cut $5,000 to $10,000 off the costs,” says Leo Young at Cornell Communities. “Combined with higher FHA loan limits for this type of housing, that’s better margins on the buy side and more qualified buyers on the demand side.”

Manufactured homes also cost about half as much as site-built homes, putting starter homes back within reach. “Site-built homes made cheap starter homes disappear,” says Ryan Smith at Cinch Home Buyers. “Manufactured homes are one lever that can put a new home under $250,000 again.”

Despite plenty of enthusiasm, experts still caution that not every market will fall in line immediately.

“I’ve been through enough cycles to know that real estate is decided city by city,” says Rod Khleif at Lifetime Cashflow Academy. “I would pay close attention to where it’s actually being implemented well. Which markets are removing barriers and speeding up approvals? Those are the markets where the law may translate into real opportunity.”

Here’s more on what the newly passed ROAD Act means for buyers and sellers.

      

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What's up this week

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You asked, we answered

Q: Are office-to-residential conversions safe?

ProArtWork/Getty Images

Across the country, cities are trying to solve two problems at once—too many empty office buildings and not enough housing—by turning old office towers into apartments. But last week, these efforts raised alarm bells in New York City when the conversion of the former Pfizer headquarters into 1,600 apartments nearly fell apart mid-renovation.

What happened? Developers were adding roughly 18,000 square feet across the upper floors, and, according to lead developer Nathan Berman, that extra weight bent two steel support columns that hadn’t been reinforced to carry it. Floors sagged by as much as four inches, nine nearby buildings were evacuated, and the city declared a “collapse zone” in the middle of Manhattan. Nobody was hurt, and the building is stable now, but the nation’s largest office-to-residential conversion nearly failed structurally.

That should worry you even if you’ve never set foot in the Big Apple.

Conversions in the national pipeline have swelled to a record 90,300 units this year. New York leads the effort, but Washington, DC, is right behind with over 8,000 units, followed by Chicago, L.A., and Dallas. Smaller markets are joining in too: Phoenix has converted more office space since 2024 than it did during the entire previous decade; Denver, Philadelphia, and St. Louis have all more than doubled conversion activity in the past year, aided by tax breaks and other incentives offered by cities to make the math work.

So, are office-to-residential conversions safe? The consensus is that last week’s incident looks like a one-off, not evidence that the concept is flawed. So it shouldn’t deter future conversions, although it should tighten how the next ones get built. “The lesson is that when a project changes what a building has to carry, it needs the deepest possible level of structural review—before construction, not during it,” said Kemal Celik, a civil and urban engineering professor at NYU Abu Dhabi. “The message isn’t that conversions are dangerous; it’s that old buildings deserve new questions before you ask them to carry new loads.”

—Mark F. Bonner, Bisnow Editor-in-Chief

Got a question about real estate? Ask it here, and we’ll answer it in a future issue.

Real talk

Ethan Finkelstein/Cheap Old Houses

Ethan Finkelstein and his wife, Elizabeth, built a following as the co-founders of Cheap Old Houses. Then they bought their own fixer-upper. Here’s why it still isn’t finished yet, and what he wants others to know about city versus country life.

Q: How did you end up buying a fixer-upper farmhouse? “In 2020, we purchased a falling-down farmhouse on 11 acres in upstate New York for $70,000. There was a competing buyer who was going to tear it down! It’s been a complete soup-to-nuts project. We’re still working on it. We built six fireplaces in there; we have five bedrooms and five bathrooms. My wife, Elizabeth, has a master’s degree in preservation. We really wanted to do a quality job. It was less an investment and more about love.”

Q: What did you learn fixing up this farmhouse? “Know what you’re getting into in terms of time and money. You need a lot of both; this was not the quick-flip game. But learning from that house has helped us work on other houses in a more economical way.”

Q: What’s your advice for others who want to renovate a country home? “Please think carefully about buying something far from where you live. We’ve met hundreds of people who purchased cheap old houses, and the ones that tend to fall through are the ones that are far away. It seems really dreamy to keep flying out to restore your house, but you’re adding travel costs on top of restoration costs, which are already expensive. If you have the opportunity to be flexible in where you live, you’re going to have more opportunities to get into real estate. To get familiar with a town, get on their Facebook groups—every town and village has one. Country foreclosure auctions aren’t advertised beyond signs around the area, so you have to be local to find them. The house my mom is living in now is a foreclosure we bought at auction in 2022 for $27,000.”

Q: Is a home ever too old to be saved? “A lot of old houses have been abandoned for 30 years and are still standing. They’re fine because they’re built with solid old-growth wood. I think the bigger problem is newer builds and renovations with subpar material, where someone added a crappy brand-new bathroom—that’s the problematic part. I think another challenge is that a lot of aging housing is in areas that have been shrinking, population-wise. We truly believe these local communities can be amazing places to live and put down roots.”

Click here to see more photos of their cheap old houses.

      

Housing market of the week

Road Warrior Investors; knowlesgallery/Getty (sign)

We talked about Boise with Tanice Myers, who runs Road Warrior Investors with her husband, Paul.

Average home price: $508,258 (up 0.9% YoY)
Homes that sell over list price: 35.1%
Homes that sell under list price: 38.7%
Average rent: $1,852/month

How she got started: The couple bought their first rental while both were working full-time. “We learned the business the way most investors do: one property, one problem, one lesson at a time,” Myers says. “Paul came from an engineering and construction background. I spent 23 years in corporate technology, including at Microsoft. These two backgrounds became a powerful combination in real estate, and what started as a side hustle eventually grew into a full-time business.”

Her market’s pros: Now that Meta and Micron have set up offices in Boise, Myers sees the makings of a new tech hub. “In Seattle, we saw how tech created jobs and demand for housing,” she explains. “We’re now seeing similar dynamics emerge in the suburb of Treasure Valley across a wide range of housing needs, from owner-occupied homes to long-term rentals, mid-term rentals, short-term housing, and workforce housing.”

The cons: Insurance costs, property taxes, and renovation expenses are rising. To find deals, Myers targets distressed properties; one of their acquisitions was even crowned 2025’s Ugliest House of the Year by HomeVestors, the company behind We Buy Ugly Houses. “It was the kind of house many buyers would overlook because of the amount of work required, but for us, it was also the kind of project where the right investor could create value,” Myers says. Purchased for $365,000, the house cleaned up so nicely that they ended up listing it for $624,000. However, she adds, “A good project is not just about the numbers. It can also improve housing stock, support local contractors and vendors, strengthen neighborhoods, and create a ripple effect in the community.”

Her advice: “Run your numbers based on today’s market, not the appreciation you hope might happen tomorrow,” Myers says. “During periods of rapid growth, it is easy for investors to rely on appreciation. We saw that happen in Seattle. But it can put you in a bad position when the market changes. Appreciation should be a bonus, not the reason the deal works.”

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