White House backs deregulation as it looks to address estimated 10M housing deficit

The White House estimates that the U.S. has a housing shortage of 10 million single-family homes, according to the annual Economic Report of the President released on Monday. This shortage is largely a product of overregulation, the report claims.

To combat the housing deficit, White House economists detailed possible regulatory cuts they say could spur new construction. They set their sights on numerous local regulations, in addition to Biden-era federal climate restrictions that allegedly raise housing costs and hinder development.

But the White House’s housing shortage estimate — and its criteria for calculating it — is under dispute. While economists and industry insiders generally believe that the nation needs to build more housing, most estimates place the national housing deficit well short of the 10-million mark. 

How big is America’s housing shortage?

In 2024, Freddie Mac estimated that the housing shortage was 3.7 million units, and earlier this year, Realtor.com similarly pegged the housing supply gap at just over 4 million homes. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) estimates a more modest 1.2 million-unit shortage based on 2024 data. 

Brad Case, chief residential economist at Homes.com, told HousingWire‘s The Builder’s Daily that housing shortage estimates can vary depending on the criteria used. He questioned the White House’s housing shortage estimate, as well as its sole emphasis on owner-occupied, single-family housing. 

On the other end of the spectrum, some argue that there is no true housing shortage because everyone, other than those who are experiencing chronic homelessness, finds a place to live, even if these housing situations aren’t ideal. For example, some people may have to live with roommates or with parents for longer than desired.

Case estimates the housing shortage is somewhere between 4 and 5 million homes. But this estimate accounts for all housing types, not just single-family.

“I look at the number of households relative to the number of adults, and that’s what we call the headship rate. And typically, there’s about one housing unit per two adults, so half an adult per housing unit. And I think that there are people who would like to form their own households that aren’t able to because they can’t afford to, right? And that’s what tells me that we have something that can be called a housing shortage,” Case explained. 

Decline in residential construction rates

Between 1983 and 2007, the average number of housing starts per year was about 6,000 homes per 1 million people. Since 2008, the White House says, average starts are running at about half that number, or roughly 3,000 starts per 1 million people. This is the methodology it used to calculate the housing shortage. 

“If homebuilding and the growth of the single-family housing stock had continued at their historical pace instead of falling dramatically after 2008, there would be 10 million or more additional single-family homes today,” the report read. 

But assuming that construction should have continued at the pace seen before the Great Recession isn’t necessarily the right approach, Case argues. 

Residential construction peaked in the early 1970s. In 1972, annual housing starts reached a high point of nearly 2.5 million units, about 1 million more than the levels experienced as of January 2026.

Housing starts generally trended downward after the early 1970s, despite some peaks and valleys, before experiencing a resurgence in the late 1990s into the early 2000s. After the Great Recession, starts dropped precipitously and have not yet fully recovered.

As Case puts it, the decline in housing starts from the early 1970s was at least partially driven by increased local regulations. Many municipalities deliberately favored building larger, more expensive homes, often for adults without children, to maximize property tax revenue while minimizing public service expenses such as schools. 

By the late 1990s, the federal government began easing underwriting standards, supporting low down payment loans and relaxing credit requirements in an effort to make homeownership more accessible. This stimulated additional housing demand, at least for a period. 

“When you stimulate demand for something, there’s going to be a supply response. So there was a supply response, but that was always built on a little bit of an artificial boost in demand for housing,” Case said. “So that’s why there is that blip in the early 2000s that didn’t last. The demand evaporated.”

Federal push to increase supply, cut regulations

The Trump administration has made housing affordability and increased homeownership a top economic priority. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, President Donald Trump exemplified this platform as he declared that “America will not become a nation of renters.”

The Economic Report of the President, drafted by the White House Council of Economic Advisors, set its sights on making homeownership more attainable. Overall, the strategy is to expand housing supply through regulatory reform. The expectation is that increased construction — especially in supply-constrained, high-cost markets — will put downward pressure on prices and improve affordability over time.

The report argues that excessive regulations are a major factor in higher home prices, claiming that government regulations add more than $100,000 in costs to each single-family home. While some regulations are necessary to ensure quality and safety, the report cites numerous local and state rules that it deems counterproductive. 

For example, exclusionary zoning practices that favor single-family housing only — rather than allowing flexibility for accessory dwelling units, duplexes and small multifamily buildings — can restrict density and supply in certain high-demand areas. 

The report also calls for reduced regulatory burdens that directly affect construction costs, such as building codes and heavy impact fees. While maintaining safety standards, it advocates for eliminating duplicative or burdensome rules that do not overtly contribute to health or safety. 

While these regulations are determined on the municipal and state levels, the federal government could decide to tie federal funding to state and local governments to a reduction in certain regulations. The bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, for example, would incentivize municipalities to streamline residential construction by making federal Community Development Block Grant funding contingent on an increase in housing supply. 

At the federal level, the report goes after Biden-era green energy mandates, such as stricter energy-efficiency standards, that Trump’s White House economists believe have increased construction costs. 

Another administration priority is a proposed federal ban on institutional investors that own 350 or more single-family homes from purchasing additional homes. That proposal is one of the provisions in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which Trump has not yet signed into law. Some detractors worry that the regulation could harm rental supply, but administration officials counter that it could boost homeownership. 

Why aren’t builders just building more?

If the U.S. has an undersupply of millions of homes, why don’t developers and homebuilders just build more housing? After all, an increase in supply would likely reduce home prices and rents, thereby making the American dream of homeownership more attainable.

For homebuilders specifically, the answer is often a business decision, one that they deem necessary. Affordability remains constrained and mortgage rates are still relatively high. These factors, combined with an excess of new-home supply in certain high-growth Sun Belt markets, pushed new-home prices down 2% year over year between December 2024 and December 2025.

At the same time, construction costs and other expenses like labor and land remain high. As a result, homebuilder margins continue to compress, with many public homebuilders reporting a drop of several hundred basis points in gross profit margins over the past year. 

The following are examples of year-over-year declines in gross profit margins, pulled from public homebuilders’ latest earnings reports.

• KB Home: 15.3%, down from 20.2%. 
• Smith Douglas Homes: 19.9%, down from 25.5%.
• Lennar: 15.2%, down from 18.7%
• Meritage Homes: 16.5%, down from 23.2%

Amid this trend, homebuilders are now faced with a dilemma. For many, if they increase housing starts too much — or at all — it could require concessions on price or incentives that might push margins down even further. This is part of the reason why single-family housing starts fell 7.3% last year. 

The Trump administration has made housing affordability and fewer regulatory burdens a central pillar of its economic agenda. Not everybody agrees on the specifics of the agenda, but among homebuilders, there is broad consensus on making housing affordability part of the national conversation.