The STREAMLINE Act gives Indian tribes more control over buying land on or near their reservations by letting them use their own appraisals instead of waiting for the federal government to do it. Currently, when a tribe wants to acquire land within its reservation or next to land it already owns, the Department of the Interior has to conduct or review an official appraisal to determine the land's value. This process can be slow and bureaucratic. Under this new law, tribes that have signed self-governance agreements with the federal government and have taken on their own real estate management responsibilities can now prepare their own professional appraisals following standard industry practices. The federal government will accept these tribal appraisals as valid, cutting out the middleman and speeding up the land acquisition process.

The law applies specifically to tribes that have entered into self-governance contracts or compacts under federal law and have taken responsibility for managing their own real estate and conducting valuations. When these tribes submit an appraisal that meets professional standards, the Interior Department must accept it and can only do a basic check to confirm they received it and recorded it properly. The government still has to follow all other rules about environmental protection, title verification, and public notice—this law only streamlines the appraisal part. To make sure the system works well, the government will track how long it takes to process land acquisitions using tribal appraisals compared to federal appraisals, and an independent auditor will evaluate the results after three years to see if the process is actually faster and maintains quality.