A newly released White House report outlines the Trump administration’s strategy to combat the national housing affordability crisis by aggressively targeting local zoning laws, green energy building codes and institutional investors.
In Chapter 6 of the 2026 Economic Report of the President, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) asserts that a 42% “bureaucrat tax” is stifling the U.S. housing supply and driving up borrowing costs. The administration argues that slashing these regulations, coupled with restricting corporate homebuying and curbing illegal immigration, will unleash the construction of 13.2 billion homes and restore market balance.
The White House economists highlight a jarring disconnect between home values and wages over the past quarter-century. Between 2000 and 2003, real house prices surged by nearly 82%, the report noted, outpacing a 12% growth in real median income.
This widening affordability gap has elevated monthly payments, making high debt-to-income (DTI) ratios the primary reason for mortgage loan denials. In 2023, DTI constraints accounted for 34.4% of loan denials, compared to just 9.3% due to insufficient downpayments, the cost of which has climbed in recent years.
Central to the administration’s critique is the so-called bureaucrat tax, a combination of fees, mandates and red tape that the CEA estimates adds over $100,000 to the cost of a new single-family home. According to the report, regulatory compliance accounts for nearly 29.5% of total costs for a new home.
The White House specifically targeted the prior administration’s green energy building codes, citing estimates from the National Association of Home Builders that building to the required standards adds up to $31,000 to the price of a new home.
“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 claims.
The White House also places blame on what it views as adverse sources of housing demand that compete with typical U.S. families.
Institutional investors have amassed thousands of single-family homes, with their localized market share reaching up to 5% in certain metropolitan areas, the report stated. The Trump administration has taken steps to ban large institutional investors from purchasing more single-family homes, though the potential impact of this move is disputed.
The CEA also estimates that the surge in illegal immigration from 2022 to 2024 drove real house prices up by 3.2% across 227 metropolitan areas.
To reverse the supply shortage, the CEA recommends state and local governments adopt a specific list of deregulatory “best practices.” The proposed guidelines include establishing fast-track approval processes capped at 60 days, rolling back strict energy efficiency mandates and banning greenbelts or urban containment boundaries that artificially limit available land, among a variety of other options.
