H.R. 1 and the Regulatory Supercycle

How the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Rewrites Real Estate, Energy, and Infrastructure Timing

When the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) became law in mid-2025, it was sold as a simple tax extension. In practice, it marked the next phase of America’s regulatory supercycle—a decade-long series of mega-bills that keep rewiring how money, permits, and power flow through the built environment.

A New Federal Baseline

H.R. 1 made the 2017 tax cuts permanent, restored 100 percent bonus depreciation, raised the SALT cap for households, and loosened limits on business-interest deductions. For investors and developers, that means tax attributes are back at the center of the capital stack: more front-loaded depreciation, stronger after-tax yields, and wider room for private credit to fill senior-loan gaps.

But every tailwind comes with a headwind. The bill compresses and curtails the clean-energy incentives that powered the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Production and investment credits for wind, solar, and building efficiency now expire years earlier, forcing energy-adjacent projects to move faster or lose their federal support.

From Incentives to Adjacency

That shift creates a new competitive map. Projects close to firm power—substations, pipelines, and dispatchable generation—gain value as renewable-only markets lose time and certainty. Developers that once chased low-cost solar sites are pivoting toward “energy-adjacent real estate”: data-center campuses, logistics corridors, and mixed-use districts built around reliable capacity rather than speculative supply.

At the same time, many climate-oriented transit and housing programs are being scaled back or re-shaped. Future transit-oriented development (TOD) plays will rely less on stacked federal grants and more on state zoning reforms, local value-capture tools, and private mission capital.

The Regulatory Duration Premium

The biggest insight from H.R. 1 is about time. By shortening tax-credit windows while debt markets price higher rates, Washington effectively made “regulatory duration” the new underwriting metric. A project that can clear zoning, environmental review, and interconnection within 30 months is now worth far more than one that drags into year five.

This favors teams built for speed—those with entitlement intelligence, permitting relationships, and flexible capital ready to strike before incentive clocks run out.

The Supercycle in Motion

Together with the IIJA, IRA, and a wave of state-level zoning reforms, H.R. 1 completes a cycle:

• 2017 – Tax Cuts: Capital acceleration

• 2021 – Infrastructure: Public works rebuild

• 2022 – Clean Energy: Decarbonization push

• 2025 – H.R. 1: Tax lock-in + energy reset

Each phase doesn’t replace the last—it stacks on top of it, producing overlapping incentives, risks, and windows of opportunity. This is why OUM calls it the Regulatory Supercycle: a policy sequence that defines where value—and volatility—live for a generation.

Oliver UnZoned Media tracks how laws like H.R. 1 move markets—from the zoning board to the bond desk.

This is the era of regulatory velocity. Know the cycle, or get caught in it.

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