Hello REALTORS®,
Each year, thousands of Realtors go to Washington DC to meet with our members of Congress. This year, that is next week. What will they be talking about?
Key Legislative Priorities
NAR is focused on two main policy areas: increasing housing supply and protecting and supporting self-employed professionals like Realtors. These are some of the specific legislative priorities your association is supporting:
Building Housing Supply and Opportunity
- More Homes on the Market Act (H.R. 1340), which decreases the tax penalties when homeowners sell their homes.
- Housing Supply Framework Act (H.R. 2840/S. 1299), which creates a national strategy for increasing new housing production, primarily by reducing financial and regulatory barriers.
- Revitalizing Downtowns and Main Streets Act (H.R. 2410), which incentivizes the conversion of underused commercial properties into residential and mixed-use housing.
- Uplifting First-Time Homebuyers Act (H.R. 3526), which increases the amount that can be withdrawn penalty-free from an IRA and used for a down payment on a first home. The bill proposes to increase the amount from $10,000 to $50,000.
- Fair and Equal Housing Act (not yet introduced), which affirms Supreme Court rulings that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected classes under the Fair Housing Act, ensuring equal housing protections for all Americans.
Support Self-Employed Professionals (like Realtors)
- Association Health Plans Act (H.R. 2528/S. 1847), which provides REALTORS® with access to quality, affordable health care.
- Direct Seller and Real Estate Agent Harmonization Act (not yet introduced), which ensures that real estate agents maintain their independent contractor status under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Department of Labor has tried to reduce these protections for Realtors in the past.
- Main Street Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 703/S .213), which preserves the 20% deduction for pass-through business income.
Tax and Fiscal Priorities
These five priorities are already in the budget bill passed by the U.S. House:
- Qualified Business Income Deduction (Section 199A) will be permanently increased from 20% to 23%. 90% of Realtor members are independent contractors or small business owners who will benefit from this change.
- Increase the State and Local Tax Deduction (SALT). The SALT tax cap is proposed to increase from $10,000 to $40,000 for households earning under $500,000. As home prices increase, the current cap is increasingly a problem for South Carolina taxpayers.
- Individual Tax Rate reduction in the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) is set to expire at the end of 2025. The bill makes the current tax rates permanent.
- Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID) is preserved and made permanent. The current deduction was reduced in the TCJA.
- Business SALT and 1031 Like-Kind Exchanges, which are often erroneously called a tax loophole, are both protected in the current tax bill.
While not NAR priorities, NAR reports that these real estate-positive tax provisions are in the House bill as well:
- Maintain the current Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC).
- Temporarily increase the Child Tax Credit to $2,500 (2025–2028). This change will help first-time homebuyers.
- Create Tax-Advantaged Child Investment Accounts, which can be used for first-time home purchases.
- Increase and make permanent the Estate and Gift Tax Threshold ($15 Million). A significant level of generational wealth transfer will occur as 75 million Baby Boomers die in the next 30-40 years.
- No Top Tax-Rate Increase. A proposed top rate of 39.6% was removed from the House bill.
- Restoration of “Big 3” Business Tax Provisions:
- full expensing of research and development (R&D)
- bonus depreciation
- restoring interest expense deduction limits
- Immediate expensing of certain industrial structure expenses used in manufacturing, refining, and agriculture.
- No change to the carried interest treatment.
- Opportunity Zones, which was also part of the TCJA, is renewed with revised incentives to encourage targeted investment, including in rural areas.
Who is going from the Western Upstate
Please thank these Realtors from the Western Upstate who will travel to Washington next week to represent you and advocate for issues important to Realtors.
- Carolann Newton
- Dianna Brouthers
- Josh Grant
- Lorraine Harding
- Melanie Dugan
- Reah Smith
- Rick Stroud
- Francine Powers
- Ashley Eller
Congratulations Francine Powers
Please also thank Francine Powers, who will be inducted into the RPAC Hall of Fame next week. She has been a consistent and generous supporter of RPAC for more than a decade.
How you can help
If real estate is your profession, politics is your business. It’s inescapable, unfortunately. Fortunately, your association is advocating on your behalf. But you can help.
RPAC is an important element of your Realtors Association’s advocacy program. I encourage you to support RPAC, and we make it easy to do so—we include a voluntary RPAC contribution on your annual dues renewal. Simply pay it and you have support RPAC. If you want to do more than that modest amount, that’s easy too.
Michael Dey, Director of Government Affairs