The�2024 United States elections are scheduled to be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. In addition to the Presidential election, all 435 seats in the  and 34 of the 100 seats in the  will be contested to determine membership to the�. Thirteen state and territorial  and numerous other state and local elections will also be contested.
The following is a breakdown of the races in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate and an overview of the housing positions for each Presidential candidate.
The House
Entering the 2024 election, Republicans hold a slim majority in the House. Currently, Republicans hold 220 seats and Democrats hold 213. Although all 435 seats are up for election, about 90% of House seats are uncompetitive. Most political experts agree that only somewhere between 40 and 43 of the House’s 435 seats are “in play,� which means those seats are either considered a toss-up or leaning toward one party or the other.
Taking a closer look at these 40 to 43 races, some national election forecasters have recently shifted their outlook in favor of the Democrats after Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden atop the ticket. Though Democrats feared Biden would drag down congressional candidates across the country, Harris has polled far better against Donald Trump.
The Senate
34 Senate seats will be decided in the November election. Currently, Democrats hold a slim majority in the chamber, controlling 51 seats (in part thanks to three independents who caucus with the Democrats). Republicans hold 49 seats. Democrats represent a handful of states that Republicans have consistently won, including West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, where the GOP is optimistic that it will take control.
Presidential candidates� stances on housing issues
Below is a brief summary of Vice President Kamala Harris’s and former President Donald Trump’s position on housing issues during this election cycle, and how they could impact the nation’s housing market if they are elected in November.
Rents & housing
Harris
The Vice-President would ask Congress to pass two laws � the Stop Predatory Investing Act and the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act.
The Stop Predatory Investing Act would deny interest and depreciation tax deductions for taxpayers who own 50 or more single-family properties.
The Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act aims to make it illegal for landlords to use rent price data shared with them by third parties to help them increase rents.
Harris has also called for the construction of 3 million homes in four years. She has also:
- Proposed a $10,000 tax credit spread over two years for first-time homebuyers to offset higher interest rates.
- To help increase the inventory of lower-cost homes, Biden previously proposed a one-year tax credit of up to $10,000 for middle-class families who sell a home that is below the median price in the area.
- Proposed building or renovating more than 3 million housing units and offering $25,000 in down-payment assistance to first-generation homebuyers.
Trump
The Trump campaign does not have a housing proposal, but a review of Trump’s first four years in office could provide a roadmap.
In all four of his presidential budget requests, Trump has called for the elimination of housing programs such as the Community Development Block Grant, which directs funding to local and state governments to rehabilitate and build affordable housing. Trump’s budgets also would have slashed the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, which is a home energy assistance program for low-income families.
Also, Trump has long opposed building multi-family housing and has instead thrown his support behind single-family zoning, which would exclude other types of housing. Such land-use regulation is conducted by local government bodies, not the federal government, though the federal government could influence it.
Taxes
Trump
Pledging across-the-board tax cuts if he returns to office, in part by prolonging soon-to-expire income tax cuts, along with estate and wealth tax breaks, from legislation he signed in 2017. He will maintain the corporate income tax rate at 21%.
Harris
Supports raising the corporate income tax rate to 28%, bringing it closer to the 35% rate that prevailed prior to Mr. Trump's term.
The Harris administration would also aim to expand tax incentives for businesses that build affordable rental housing. The specifics regarding this aren’t known, but the current Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) gives state and local tax credit-allocating agencies a budget of about $10 billion a year to issue tax credits for the “acquisition, rehabilitation or new construction of rental housing targeted to lower-income households.�
Opening up federal lands
Both candidates support opening some federal lands for housing, which would mean selling the land for construction purposes with a certain percentage of units allocated to affordable housing.
The federal government owns about 650 million acres of land, or roughly 30% of all land in the United States.
Neither candidate has gone into detail on this proposal.