Barack Obama Calls for Housing Market Revolution

Former President Barack Obama has called for the reform of “outdated” housing market regulations to allow the construction of new homes across the U.S. and alleviate a supply shortage that has driven up prices in the past few years.

“We can’t just rely on the ideas of the past, we need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today. And Kamala understands this,” Obama told the crowd gathered at the United Center in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday.

“She knows for example that if we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country,” the former president added, as the crowd roared in response. “This is a priority. And she has put out a bold new plan to do just that.”

The warm reception given to the former president’s speech suggests that the unaffordability of the housing market is an important issue to many Americans, and one that is expected to be on many voters’ minds when they head to the ballot boxes in November.

The U.S. housing market is facing a historic lack of supply after the country chronically under built in the years following the financial crisis of 2007-2008. This shortage of homes contributed to higher prices as demand grew during the pandemic, when mortgage rates were relatively low. Even as mortgage rates suddenly jumped up between 2022 and 2023 and sales slumped, home prices have remained high, partly because of the low availability of homes on the market.

Even as inventory has grown modestly this year, home prices at the national level are still on the rise. As of July, according to Redfin’s latest data, the median sale price of a home in the U.S. was $439,170, up 4.1 percent compared to a year earlier, though down 0.7 percent month-over-month.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, said she will build 3 million new homes by the end of her first term if elected president to ease the shortage and boost homeownership. Speaking in Raleigh, North Carolina, last week, the vice president said she will fight to “end America’s housing shortage,” including by cutting “red tape” at the local and state level, addressing existing delays and restrictions to housing production.

“In some places, it is too difficult to build, and it is driving prices up,” Harris said. Newsweek previously reported that “blue” states like California and New York were struggling to keep up with “red” states like Texas and Florida in terms of new home construction because of strict regulations.

Other parts of her housing agenda include offering $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers, which she says could support more than 4 million Americans purchasing a home in the next four years, and clamping down on investors wanting to buy homes in stock.

Newsweek contacted the Harris’ campaign for comment by email on Wednesday.

While extra supply is what the U.S. housing market needs to become more affordable, the country requires more than 3 million new homes. According to a recent report by Zillow, the U.S. was short of 4.5 million homes in 2022, up from 4.3 million a year earlier.

“The simple fact is there are not enough homes in this country, and that’s pushing homeownership out of reach for too many families,” Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow, wrote in the June report. “The affordability crisis extends to renters as well, with nearly half of renter households being cost burdened. Filling the housing shortage is the long-term answer to making housing more affordable. We are in a big hole, and it is going to take more than the status quo to dig ourselves out of it.”