HOUSE Act of 2025

This bill would stop new federal energy-efficiency rules for homes funded by HUD and USDA. It tells those agencies to cancel their recent decision to use stricter building codes for new construction and go back to the older standards they used before. It also blocks the VA from doing something similar and bars the Federal Housing Finance Agency from setting energy-efficiency rules for single- and multifamily housing. In the future, HUD and USDA could only adopt updates to these energy codes if at least 26 states have already done so.

What this means day to day:

• Who is affected: Home builders and buyers using HUD or USDA programs, renters in housing built with those programs, and lenders connected to federal housing finance.
• What changes: The stricter codes—2021 IECC for low-rise homes and 2019 ASHRAE 90.1 for taller multifamily buildings—would be withdrawn, and the older energy standards would return. Agencies could not spend money to enforce the newer rules or anything similar.
• State trigger: HUD and USDA could only adopt future code updates if at least half the states (26 or more) have already adopted equal or stronger standards.

In short, the bill aims to pause or roll back newer energy-efficiency requirements for federally backed housing until many states move first.