On March 13, President Trump signed two executive orders aimed at lowering housing costs by cutting regulatory barriers and expanding access to mortgage credit. One order focuses on home construction, directing federal agencies to revisit environmental, permitting, energy, and land-use-related requirements that the administration says make housing more expensive to build. The second focuses on mortgage lending, with an emphasis on easing compliance burdens and encouraging more participation from community banks and smaller lenders.
Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction
This executive order says housing has become less affordable because regulatory barriers, slow permitting, and costly mandates have delayed construction, restricted development, and increased the cost of new housing. It states that the administration’s policy is to reduce those barriers and use taxpayer dollars in a way that promotes housing affordability.
The order does several key things:
- Targeting Federal Regulatory Barriers to Residential Development. The order directs federal agencies to review and revise water-related permitting requirements; consider eliminating burdensome rules and reforming programs that constrain residential development, especially for affordable single-family homes and suburban or exurban neighborhoods; and reform or, where appropriate, eliminate costly energy-efficiency, water-use, and alternative-energy requirements affecting housing, including manufactured housing.
- Streamlining Federal Permitting Requirements for Residential Development. The order directs the Council on Environmental Quality to provide guidance on implementing NEPA in a way that maximally exempts or reduces burdens on housing construction, preservation, adaptive reuse, and related infrastructure. It also directs the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to reduce burdens under Section 106 review so reporting requirements are no more burdensome than necessary.
- Boosting Housing Affordability Through State and Local Regulatory Best Practices. Within 60 days of the order, HUD, in coordination with the White House Domestic Policy office, must develop regulatory best practices for state and local governments to promote housing construction and affordability. These best practices are to include faster permitting, limits on costly mandates and retroactive code changes, more flexibility for manufactured and modular housing, and fewer arbitrary limits on residential development beyond urban centers. The order also directs USDA, HUD, Transportation, and EPA to revise regulations, guidance, grants, technical assistance, and related practices, as appropriate, to advance those best practices.
- Facilitating New Residential Construction in Opportunity Zones. The order directs Treasury and HUD to evaluate how programs, grants, financing tools, and other incentives can be better aligned with Opportunity Zone tax incentives to expand investment in single-family home construction. It also directs them to assess whether Opportunity Zones and the New Markets Tax Credit can be better coordinated to support single-family construction in qualifying census tracts.
The Mortgage Credit Executive Order Complements the Construction Order
The second executive order focuses on mortgage credit and takes a similar deregulatory approach. It directs the CFPB and federal banking regulators to review rules that the administration says have increased costs, reduced lender participation, and made it harder for families to access mortgage credit.
The order includes possible changes to mortgage documentation requirements, HMDA reporting, appraisal rules, capital and liquidity standards, and electronic mortgage processing. It also places particular emphasis on community banks, construction lending, and small-dollar mortgages. The administration argues that reducing compliance burdens in these areas could help restore competition in mortgage lending and make homeownership more accessible to creditworthy borrowers.
What the Executive Orders Say About the Administration’s Housing Approach
Taken together, the two orders show that the administration is approaching housing affordability primarily through regulatory reform and expanded housing production. That approach places particular emphasis on supply-side solutions—including permitting reform, streamlined federal review, reconsideration of certain energy and water requirements, encouragement of state and local best practices, and improved access to mortgage credit. It also reflects a strong interest in supporting single-family construction, manufactured housing, and residential development in suburban and exurban areas.
At the same time, the orders are a starting point rather than the final policy outcome. Their impact will depend on how federal agencies carry them out through guidance, administrative changes, and, where necessary, formal rulemaking. The overall direction is clear; the next question is how these directives will be implemented in practice and what effect they will have on housing affordability.