3 Things in the New Housing Law That Matter for Eugene Homeowners

By Darren Ricketts

Darren Ricketts is the Team Leader of the Ricketts Group at eXp Realty, serving clients throughout Eugene, Oregon, and the surrounding areas.

Congress just passed the biggest housing bill they’ve passed in decades. The bill is called the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. It passed with massive bipartisan support, and despite the president choosing not to sign it, it officially became law on July 11, 2026. That’s how our system works. Pretty great, actually.

There’s a lot of noise about what this bill does. I want to cut through it and focus on the three components that are actually important, and that can really impact individuals: corporate investor limits, manufactured housing modifications, and building incentives. Let me walk through each one and how they affect our market here in Eugene.

Corporate investor limits. This one I’m a huge fan of. Basically, companies that own 350 or more single-family homes can no longer buy any more. What that means is that these massive corporations that can write a $500,000 check easier than I can eat a bowl of Captain Crunch just can’t come in and buy up all the inventory anymore. More inventory stays available for actual homeowners, and hopefully, that helps take some of the upward pressure off prices because families aren’t competing against multibillion-dollar companies for the same houses.

Now, let me be honest. This wasn’t a huge issue in Eugene, the way it was in places like Phoenix. Those markets got hit much harder by institutional buyers. But with the university here driving rental demand and our prices still below Portland, it’s definitely in effect. Somewhere between 15% and 25% of all transactions in this market are cash, and some of those cash deals are with these larger companies. So the protection matters, even here.

Manufactured housing just got more affordable. The second piece is about manufactured housing, and this one is really important for Lane County. The law removes some outdated requirements on how manufactured homes are built, requirements that just aren’t as relevant as they used to be. The result is about $5,000 to $10,000 in savings per unit.

These are really solid, affordable houses that fill a good niche here in Lane County. Making them cheaper to build doesn’t mean cutting the quality. It means lowering costs by removing regulations that were adding expense without adding value. Nothing but positive news.

Building incentives. This is the big-picture one. Everyone asks why housing is unaffordable. The main cause is basic economics: supply versus demand. We’ve had a housing supply shortage for years at this point, and our federal government is finally starting to create incentives to make the building process more affordable.

Oregon is actually ahead of the curve on a lot of this. Eugene’s ADU policies and middle-housing legislation are already in progress and have been for a while. The difference now is that the federal government is stepping in to incentivize those same kinds of programs, and that’s good for everyone. It means more support for the kind of building that’s already happening here and more pressure on other states to catch up.

What it doesn’t change. The main thing this law doesn’t touch at all is mortgage rates. We’re sitting right around 6.5% right now. It feels like that number changes every day, and it kind of does. That’s driven by inflation, supply chain dynamics, and Federal Reserve policy, none of which this bill addresses.

The good news is rates are better than they were last year. Hopefully, as some of the broader economic pressures ease, we’ll see them come down further. This bill doesn’t move rates, but the building and supply provisions could help ease the affordability picture from the other direction over time.

If you’ve got questions about what any of this means for your specific situation, give me a shout. I’m happy to walk through how these changes can represent actual meaningful change for you and what it really means for the overall market. Call or text me at (541) 852-2565, email me at darren@rickettsgroup.net, or visit blog.rickettsgroup.net. Let’s talk.