Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy on Tuesday introduced legislation that would ban foreign adversaries from buying American homes.
The legislation, titled The Ban Chinese Communist and Islamist Home Ownership Act, would ban all purchases of such housing and require the divestment of all current residential ownership by adversarial foreign owners.
“American homes belong to American families — not the Chinese Communist Party, foreign Islamists or our geopolitical foes. While Americans struggle to afford housing, hostile regimes are buying up our land and neighborhoods,” Mr. Roy said.
“This bill slams the door on foreign adversaries owning American housing and forces them to sell what they already control. We’re putting America’s homes back in American hands.”
The legislation requires the divestment within two years and requires that the sold housing stock be sold to Americans. The bill covers not only single-family homes, but also all U.S. housing stock, including apartments and co-ops.
The bill says it covers “Foreign Countries of Concern and their citizens, Foreign Entities of Concern, designated foreign adversaries, designated state sponsors of terrorism, any agent or instrument of the previously designated, and corporations with ownership stakes by any of the previously listed persons or entities.”
While there is no federal registry tracking the total stock of homes owned between April 2024 and March 2025, according to the National Association of Realtors, Chinese nationals spent $13.7 billion on existing homes in the U.S. — an 83% spike from the previous year — making them the top foreign investors in U.S. residential real estate by spending and transaction quantity.
The NAR’s annual report last year focused on the top buyer countries by volume. The top foreign buyers of U.S. homes between April 2024 and March 2025 were China (15% of foreign purchases, $13.7 billion), Canada (14%, $6.2 billion), Mexico (8%, $4.4 billion), India (6%, $2.2 billion) and the U.K. (4%, $2.0 billion).
Hostile nations Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Syria are not among the top-tracked groups, because their volumes may be tiny or effectively obscured through shell companies and other legal structures.
According to Home Abroad Inc., a property tech and financial tech platform that helps international buyers and global investors purchase and finance U.S. real estate, the buyers are a composition of nonresidents purchasing from abroad and Chinese nationals already living in the U.S.
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