Affordability's Rise as Political Hot Button Stokes Stepped-Up Campaign to Reduce Reg Burdens
- Craig Webb
- Nov 12, 2025
- 4 min read
By Craig Webb, President, Webb Analytics
Fifty-year mortgages? If you really want to build more homes, how about zoning changes, better building codes, and quicker permitting instead?
Affordability's emergence as a key topic in the mid-term elections, combined with President Trump's sudden proposal for 50-year mortgages, is turbocharging a growing campaign to boost home building by shedding regulatory burdens. The NAHB and construction supply groups NLBMDA and ABMA have been pushing this for a while, but now players like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and JPMorgan Chase are joining in, arguing that you can't open factories if the town where you're building lacks homes for the new factory's workers.
For dealers, joining the reg relief cause offers an opportunity to sell more materials without getting pounded every day by builders seeking cheaper goods. Reg reform advocates concede with their silence that neither material nor labor costs are likely to fall. By contrast, cutting regulatory costs looks more achievable, in part because it has gotten so big: NAHB estimates nearly a quarter of a typical new home's price goes to building codes, land use fees, OSHA and other labor requirements, and environmental rules. For multifamily development, reg costs account for 40%, NAHB says.
One of the most important proposals involves reducing lot sizes through what one advocate called "gentle density"--permitting five homes rather than three on an acre of land, for instance.
Meanwhile, governments should consider allowing duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, and accessory dwelling units on lots currently zoned for just one structure, AEI proposes. About 75% of urban land nationwide is zoned for single-family use, one study found.
Lots of groups favor permitting "by right," in which a developer doesn't need reviews or special permits if the proposed project meets all existing zoning requirements. Paralleling this is change would be the setting of time limits for permitting authorities to act; if they don't respond within a set time, the permit is automatically granted.
Will these efforts succeed? Here are three concerns.
Housing regs are largely a state, county, and local issue. Thus, what's ahead won't consist of a One Big Beautiful Reform package coming out of Washington. Rather, winning the affordability fight will require hundreds of skirmishes with NIMBY forces in thousands of neighborhoods. Expectations that this will be a local fight prompted the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to join with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in creating a collection of more than 6,000 "playbooks" customized to every state, county, city, and metro area.
The campaign will inevitably prompt a re-examination of what sort of housing constitutes the American Dream. Since World War II, you could argue that most Americans' notions of this Dream involved a big single-family detached home on an expansive lot. (Nearly 47% of the new homes in Texas and Oklahoma have at least four bedrooms.) Proposals to shrink code-enforced lot sizes and permit multifamily housing change that Dream. After years of having people envision a standalone home, big lawn, and white picket fence, will people ever imagine they've achieved the Dream if they move into a townhouse?
One institution's regulatory burden often is another person's way to solve a problem. Local governments impose fees on builders to pay for the roads, water, and sewer services that a new housing development requires. Construction codes--particularly involving energy consumption--can be expensive for a builder to install while tending to benefit the homeowner and society, not the builder. Thus, while it's easy to decry regulations in general, many will balk at eliminating specific codes and costs. Again, expect lots of skirmishes.
One thing that is clear is that both Democrats and Republicans are paying attention to this issue. The Senate Banking Committee's housing bill was created with bipartisan input and was voted out of committee unanimously. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's panels during its housing summit had Senators and Members of Congress from both parties on the stage, as well as a Republican governor and a Democrat who's speaker of the Rhode Island General Assembly. It appears that no politician wants to be thought of as anti-housing.
It's too early to tell whether the Trump Administration's idea of creating a 50-year mortgage will go beyond the blue-sky-thinking stage. But it does show that the president and his team also recognize Americans care about an environment in which the average new-home buyer is approaching 40 years old.
"If Washington’s answer to unaffordability is to make the debt longer, not the homes cheaper or the paychecks stronger, that’s an indictment — not an innovation," John McManus of The Builders Daily wrote recently. "What it also is, though, is a provocation. ... This one implicitly asks: what would it take to make a home truly attainable without bending physics, math, or morality? That’s where the real work begins — the kind that happens in city councils, zoning boards, utility districts, and builder offices. The kind that involves dirt, design, and courage. The kind that doesn’t show up in social media algorithms or presidential talking points."
Comments