Time to Heal Act

The Time to Heal Act (HR7349) was introduced in the House on February 4, 2026, by Rep. Barrett (R-MI) and referred to the Committee on Ways and Means. It is a narrow tax bill amending IRC Section 121(b)(4) to allow surviving spouses who have not remarried to exclude up to $500,000 in capital gains from the sale of a principal residence—matching the exclusion currently available only to married couples filing jointly. The change applies to sales in taxable years beginning after enactment. The bill has a single cosponsor and has seen zero committee actions since introduction, placing it at the earliest legislative stage with minimal momentum.

There is no explicit funding amount in the bill; it is a revenue-lowering tax expenditure rather than an appropriation. The Joint Committee on Taxation would estimate the revenue cost upon request, but no such estimate has been published. At current stage, the bill has no enforcement mechanism and no obligated party; it would change tax liability calculations for individual homeowners, not corporations.

No publicly traded company is directly affected. Homebuilders, real estate brokerages, title insurers, or mortgage lenders such as D.R. Horton ($DHI), Lennar ($LEN), Realogy/Anywhere ($HOUS), or Fidelity National Financial ($FNF) might see a marginal, indirect benefit if the law incentivized more home sales by widowed sellers—but the population affected is small, the exclusion already existed under prior law for sales within two years of a spouse's death, and no market data indicates pricing movement. The bill does not alter corporate tax treatment, procurement, or regulatory obligations.

Legislative timeline: The bill has no hearings, no markup, no companion Senate bill, and no CBO score. Its path requires subcommittee and full committee action in Ways and Means, House floor passage, Senate Finance Committee action, Senate floor passage, and presidential signature. With 2026 being a midterm election year and Congress focused on major expiring tax provisions (TCJA sunset), this narrow bill faces vanishing odds of enactment in the 119th Congress.