Michigan Capped Institutional Landlords at 100 Houses and Created a State Housing Tax Credit

What was signed

Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a cluster of housing bills on July 21 at Tate & Thomas Apartments, an $18 million, 45-unit low-income development in Grand Rapids.

The package creates the Michigan Housing Opportunity Tax Credit, designed to be layered on top of the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. Senate Bill 966, sponsored by Senator Jeff Irwin, together with House Bills 5806 and 5807, from Representatives Kristian C. Grant and Joseph A. Aragona, amends the State Housing Development Authority Act and directs MSHDA to administer the credit.

Qualified projects must be LIHTC-eligible and placed in service after January 1, 2027. MSHDA begins accepting applications with the January 1, 2027 award cycle. The FY27 state budget separately puts $50 million into Michigan's Housing and Community Development Fund.

The 100-home ceiling

The cap is House Bill 6074, enacted the same day as Public Act 32 of 2026, effective immediately upon the governor's signature on July 21, 2026. It creates a new act, rather than amending an existing one, prohibiting a 'large institutional investor' from purchasing or contracting to purchase a single-family home in Michigan.

The statute defines a large institutional investor as a for-profit entity — a fund, corporation, partnership, LLC, joint venture or association — that is in the business of investing in, owning, renting, managing or holding single-family homes, that directly or indirectly controls more than 100 single-family homes in the state as of the law's effective date, and that manages or holds a net value of $375 million or more during the relevant tax year, according to the House Fiscal Agency's enrolled analysis and a law-firm summary of the enacted text. Government entities are excluded from the definition.

A violator faces a civil fine of up to $25,000 per single-family home acquired in violation, collectible in a suit brought by the county prosecutor where the property sits or by the state attorney general.

What is exempted

The ban does not apply to 'excepted purchases': homes bought under a build-to-rent program of newly constructed single-family homes; homes bought under a renovate-to-rent program that substantially rehabilitates a home failing local building-code standards, provided at least 15 percent of the purchase price is spent on improvements; and homes bought under a homeownership program that caps rents at the level charged on comparable units, reports rental payments to credit bureaus, and is structured as a consumer credit transaction. It also exempts restructurings of homes an investor already owned as of the effective date, purchases under an MSHDA-approved brownfield plan, and MSHDA-approved income-qualified rental units.

A numerical ownership cap is a different instrument from the transfer taxes and disclosure rules other states have used against large-scale single-family rental buyers. Because the threshold combines a 100-home count with a $375 million net-value test, it binds only investors that clear both bars — a smaller regional landlord with 150 homes but no comparable balance sheet would fall outside the definition, while a fund well under 100 Michigan homes but with a much larger national portfolio would not be captured either unless its Michigan holdings exceed the count.

The rest of the package

The package also amends the housing code to permit a single staircase in four-storey residential buildings, according to later reporting in September.

Reporting at the time of signing put Michigan's shortage at 195,462 housing units for extremely low-income renters as of March 2026, against 185,354 a year earlier, according to MLive's account of the signing; Estate Wire did not verify that figure against an original state dataset.

The FY27 state budget signed alongside these bills puts $50 million into Michigan's Housing and Community Development Fund, per the governor's office; broader FY27 budget totals have been reported inconsistently across outlets and are not restated here. The tax credit's overall cost, statewide allocation cap and per-project limits were not disclosed in the materials Estate Wire reviewed.