The National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB) is ringing the alarm with its latest white paper, saying affordability is stopping Americans from achieving life milestones like homeownership and starting families.
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Housing affordability has been a longstanding issue in the U.S., with homeownership rates among Gen Z and millennials lagging behind older generations. The overall homeownership rate is also expected to decline in 2026 as elevated mortgage rates and home prices keep aspiring homeowners sidelined.
In its latest white paper, the National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB) said affordability has reached a level that “threatens the foundation of the American Dream” if the industry doesn’t fiercely pursue regulatory and legislative solutions. Those solutions, NAMB said, include removing regulatory barriers for homebuilders and expanding financial assistance for homebuyers through legislative means, such as the U.S. House of Representatives’ popular Housing for the 21st Century Act.
“The housing affordability crisis cannot be solved through isolated interventions,” the paper read. “Instead, meaningful progress requires coordinated action that simultaneously addresses supply constraints, financing barriers, regulatory inefficiencies, and transaction costs…. The legislative framework exists. The industry expertise is available. The political will is building. What remains is execution.”
NAMB said the affordability crisis is the result of five interconnected challenges, including a worsening supply shortage (current estimates point to between 1.5 and 5.5 million units), a widening gap between wage and home price growth, first-time homebuyers’ deepening struggle with mortgage qualification, steadily rising rents that make it more difficult for Americans to save for homeownership, and burdensome federal, state and local zoning and lending regulations that slow homebuilding permits, starts and completions.
The Association outlined four regulatory solutions aimed at expanding mortgage access, particularly for homebuyers with “moderate incomes,” defined as 130 percent of the area median income (AMI) for their metropolitan area. Currently, the AMI thresholds for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s low-down-payment mortgage programs for low-income borrowers are set at 80 percent.
However, NAMB said raising the ceiling to 130 percent would help millions of professionals — including teachers, nurses and firefighters — who still struggle to afford homes.
“Middle-income families are increasingly squeezed out of homeownership despite having stable employment and good credit,” the paper read. “In expensive metropolitan areas, 80 percent AMI may be $60,000-70,000 for a family of four, while even families earning $90,000-120,000 (100-130 percent AMI) struggle to save for down payments while paying high rents. Home prices have increased faster than incomes, making the 80 percent threshold increasingly inadequate.”
While local and state leaders are pushing for legislation like upzoning or moratoriums on artificial intelligence data centers to prevent energy cost spikes, NAMB has its sights on federal changes through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the House of Representatives’ Housing for the 21st Century Act, and the Senate’s ROAD to Housing Act. The group said each Act provides a crucial piece to the affordability puzzle.
- One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1): Restores mortgage insurance deductions and raises the State and Local Tax cap to $40,000, and permanently extends the New Markets Tax Credit at $5 billion annually and expands Opportunity Zones.
- Housing for the 21st Century Act (H.R. 6644): Streamlines zoning and permitting laws, encourages upzoning to increase housing density, expands access to development block grants, increases the use of manufactured housing, and improves financing options for homebuyers.
- ROAD to Housing Act (S. 2651): Has 40 provisions covering supply expansion, financing reforms, and regulatory streamlining.
The Association said that failing to solve the affordability crisis spells doom not only for the industry but for society at large, as broad housing access is key to building stable households and communities.
“We encourage the Administration to make housing affordability a central policy focus with measurable goals and accountability,” the paper read. “Most importantly, we remind policymakers that behind every statistic about housing affordability stands a family — teachers and nurses, firefighters and police officers, young couples and aging parents — who simply want to achieve the American Dream of homeownership. These families deserve access to the wealth-building opportunities and community stability that homeownership provides.”
In a similar vein as NAMB’s white paper, Bright MLS this month published a sentiment survey of 3,000 Americans, nine in 10 of whom said housing affordability is a major issue.
Where NAMB identified housing supply as the primary culprit, Bright’s survey respondents cited Americans’ low earnings as the main issue (55.5 percent). Their viewpoint isn’t unfounded, the survey said, with the chasm between wages and housing prices beginning in 2020. Although the market began to soften in 2024, it hasn’t been enough to bridge the gap.
“Between 2010 and 2020, household income and home price growth generally tracked, meaning incomes were typically growing about as fast as home prices,” the report read. “However, in 2020, there was a sharp divergence where home prices, as measured by the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Index, began to increase faster than the median household income. Mortgage rates, which had been falling from their 2010 levels, began to rise quickly in 2020 before beginning to flatten out.”
“By contrast, over the past 15 years, residential construction as measured by building permit activity actually seems relatively strong, with permits for new housing construction much higher than in 2010,” it added. “Consumers thinking about the relatively recent past understandably point to a lack of income growth and an uptick in mortgage rates when they think about why housing has become unaffordable.”
Like NAMB, survey respondents said they want the federal government to step in, with 84 percent saying tax credits and financial incentives for builders and buyers would provide the biggest affordability boost.
“To build support for housing policy initiatives, it is important to understand the perspective residents bring to the issue,” the survey ended. “Most Americans see value in providing incentives for first-time homebuyers (a demand-side solution) and providing incentives to developers to build lower-cost homes (a supply-side solution). However, there is relatively less support for local communities to permit the construction of more housing generally.”
Email Marian McPherson
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