A fence closes off the ruins of an oceanfront home in Mantoloking N.J. that was damaged by Superstorm Sandy. The House is pressing ahead with legislation to roll back a recently enacted overhaul of the federal flood insurance program after homeowners in flood-prone areas complained about sharp premium increases.

WASHINGTON — Less than two years after Congress approved a landmark bill to overhaul the federal flood insurance program, lawmakers are poised to undo many of the changes after homeowners in flood-prone areas complained about sharp premium increases.

The House overwhelmingly passed a bill Tuesday night that would allow sellers to give their subsidized, below-market insurance rates to new buyers and lower the cap on how much flood insurance premiums can rise each year. Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who co-sponsored the bill, said it would ensure that families across the country, including those still struggling to recover from Superstorm Sandy, can avoid “a wave of devastating premium hikes and foreclosures.”

The Senate could soon follow. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., says he supports the House measure, which mirrors a bill he sponsored and the Senate approved in January.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the House bill, but the White House said during debate on the Senate measure that it strongly supports a phased transition to risk-based flood insurance rates to help ensure that the federal flood insurance program has adequate resources to pay future claims.

Both the House and Senate measures are aimed at weakening a 2012 law designed to wean hundreds of thousands of homeowners off subsidized flood insurance rates.

The federal flood insurance program is now some $24 billion in the red, mostly because of huge losses from Sandy and Hurricane Katrina. The 2012 law required extensive updating of the flood maps used to set premiums.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., co-sponsored the 2012 law as well as the latest fix to what she called the original law’s “unintended effects” of dramatic rate increases for homeowners.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, called the flood insurance program poorly run and doomed to failure, noting that it charges just 70 percent of what officials say is needed to break even.

The program uses a faulty model that understates flood risks, with the result that a single mother in Dallas who works at a grocery store subsidizes a millionaire’s beachfront home, Hensarling said. “That is the definition of unfair,” he said.

Implementation of the 2012 law has stirred anxiety among homeowners along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and in other flood plains.