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Housing boom is back... but without the bubble America's housing market is booming with home prices nationwide now back to where they were a decade ago, just before the financial crisis

Three out of four Americans say there is a housing affordability crisis according to a new poll by the National Association of Home Builders.

People believe that the crisis is widespread, with 73% saying home affordability is a problem in the US; 68% saying it’s a problem in their state; and 54% say it’s a concern in their neighborhood.

Almost 6 in 10 said that if they wanted to buy a home in the near future, they would struggle to find one they could afford in their city or county.

“These poll results confirm what builders from across the nation have been warning about—that housing affordability is an increasingly serious problem in communities across America,” said NAHB Chairman Randy Noel, a custom home builder from LaPlace, La. “A mix of regulatory barriers, ill-considered public policy and challenging market conditions is driving up costs and making it increasingly difficult for builders to produce homes that are affordable to low- and moderate-income families.”

The survey of more than 2,200 adults, conducted at the end of November, also reveals that a larger share of respondents in urban communities (68%) and middle-class communities (64%) say there is a housing affordability problem compared to those in rural areas (56%).

Regulatory costs

NAHB says that regulatory requirements alone account for about 25% of the cost of constructing a single-family home and roughly 30% of the cost of a multifamily unit.

“Housing is vital to the economic health of our nation,” said Noel. “This poll should serve as a wake-up call to policymakers at all levels of government to ease regulatory burdens that needlessly drive up the cost of housing and to enact policies that will encourage the production of badly-needed affordable housing units.”

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