Housing & Community Development Committee advances five housing bills, including first-time buyer savings account and protections against predatory real-estate

At a Housing & Community Development Committee voting meeting streamed online, members reported five housing-related bills to the next stage of the legislative process, including measures to establish a first-time homebuyer savings account program and to ban certain long-term real-estate service agreements.

The measures addressed different parts of housing policy: House Bill 818 would create a first-time homebuyer savings account program administered by the Treasury Department; House Bill 1020 would let municipalities adopt vacant- and blighted-property registries and impose fees; House Bill 1037 would clarify that municipalities may permit replacement residential structures to use the setback dimensions of a demolished structure; House Bill 1062 would create a statewide blight data-collection system populated with property-maintenance-code serious-violation reports; and House Bill 986 would prohibit certain long-term or otherwise unlawful real-estate service agreements and treat violations as unfair or deceptive practices.

Why it matters: the bills would give local governments additional tools to address blight and vacant properties, establish a new savings vehicle aimed at first-time buyers, adjust local permitting rules intended to speed housing replacement on small lots, and add consumer protections intended to curb predatory contracts that can trap homeowners, particularly older…