LAND SALESTexas Moves Close to Ban on Some Land Sales to Foreigners
The House has approved a conference committee report that lists sales to certain people from China, North Korea, Russia and Iran as threats to national security.
With just three days left before the deadline, the House has approved the negotiated version of a bill that aims to ban people tied to the governments of China, North Korea, Russia and Iran from purchasing land in the state. The bill awaits Senate approval before going to the governor.
Senate Bill 17 has moved forward in Texas despite a federal court ruling that a similar law in Florida was likely beyond the state’s authority. It’s the second attempt by Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, who said in 2023 that the right time to address concerns over foreign entities owning Texas land is before it becomes widespread — something she sees as a way to bolster national security.
The latest data available shows that investors from the four countries own a small portion of farmland in Texas and nationally. Chinese investors own about 383,000 total acres of U.S. farmland — about 600 square miles — which is less than 1% of total, foreign-held acreage, according to the United States Department of Agriculture’s 2021 land report.
On Thursday, the House approved a conference report on the measure after both chambers passed versions of the bill. Last session, although the Senate passed a similar measure, the House failed to take it up.
In mid-May, Kolkhorst initiated a process to reconcile differences between the chambers over who should be banned. The select group of lawmakers known as a conference committee worked in private on the conference version that is now up for a vote in the Senate.
The conference report preserves the last-minute amendments from the bill passed by the House: giving the governor the authority to add more countries to the list, restricting leaseholders from renting for up to 100 years to just one year, and including language that barred people who were part of a ruling political party from buying land.
The conference committee version requires that the person have permission to live in the U.S. legally, but also that the property would serve as a primary residence. Under that version, those in the United States on work or student visas are also barred from buying a controlling interest in land as a business investment.
