Together On Fixing Housing: Solve Two, Start the Rest

There are a thousand ways to describe what housing industry leaders are facing today: uncertainty, volatility, headwinds, whiplash, and chaos.

However, challenges that have remained the same for years are running underneath the market swings, geopolitical shocks, and interest rate reversals. They’re structural, chronic, and can feel socked in and unsolvable.

Housing affordability. Sustainability. Resiliency. A next-generation workforce.

Pick any one of those four. They’re not new. COVID didn’t cause them, nor did the raft of tariffs introduced this past week on April 2. The Fed won’t cure them.

What makes them even more challenging? They bind to each other. Solve one, and you risk making another worse.

Still, at the National Housing Supply Summit in Washington, D.C., on March 19, 2025, two leading voices cut through the noise with what might be the boldest, most useful insight the industry can hear – a signal amidst the noise of the moment.

The Five Ls, and Why They’re Not the Whole Story

Robert Dietz, Chief Economist for the National Association of Home Builders, opened with the foundational backdrop: what he calls the "Five Ls" choking affordability and driving the national housing deficit.

• Labor: Short more than 300,000 workers, with 720,000 needed annually to replace retirees and keep up with demand.
• Lots: Scarce and costlier due to exclusionary zoning, NIMBYism, and permitting bottlenecks.
• Lending: Tightened access to development and construction capital, especially for small to mid-sized builders.
• Lumber and materials: Fragile supply chains, tariff-induced inflation, and price volatility.
• Laws and regulations: The biggest single weight on affordability. Up to 25% of a new home’s price comes from regulatory costs.

Dietz’s presentation was a masterclass in complexity. He reminded everyone that there is no silver bullet. Solving just one L won’t help. The others remain binding constraints. Most troubling, even marginal improvements in any one category require unlikely alignments in policy, market behavior, and operational capacity.

There’s no simple, single, scalable solution," he said. "If you just pick one and solve it, the others become binding."

Then Came Laura

And that’s when Lennar Mortgage President and Mortgage Bankers Association Chair Laura Escobar stepped up.

With the poise of a 35-year veteran and the conviction of someone unwilling to accept that the American Dream is slipping away, Escobar reframed the room.

Yes, the challenges are daunting. But so what?

People don’t stop dreaming of home because times are tough," she said. "They just need our help to make those dreams become reality."

Escobar’s call was crisp, and became the day's bright line moment: the only path forward is simplifying. Pick two or three imperatives everyone can agree on. Align. Commit. Operate against them as a united ecosystem.

What Are the Two or Three?

Neither Escobar nor Dietz handed out a specific set. That wasn’t the point. Their message was about the will to prioritize and the discipline to execute.

But it’s not hard to see what could top the list:

1. Regulatory reform – Zoning, permitting, and building codes that add time and cost without proportional benefit must be rethought. Quickly.
2. Workforce development – Without the next generation of skilled trades and site managers, productivity will continue to lag every other major sector.
3. Capital and credit access – Builders need better terms, faster approvals, and less risk friction to unlock projects.

Other candidates are critical, too: supply chain modernization, factory-built innovation, smarter energy, and resiliency standards.

But Escobar’s point wasn’t about which to pick. It was about doing the work of deciding together. Builders, lenders, regulators, investors, technologists, trade schools, and policymakers. Unified. Focused. Moving.

Why This Matters Now

We are not in a normal housing cycle. We are not in a phase where waiting for the Fed to lower rates will solve anything.

What builders and their business partners face now is a confidence crisis. Not just in consumer psychology, but in boardrooms. In city councils. In planning departments. In capital allocation meetings.

Do we invest in new land? Hire and train apprentices? Launch that ADU product line? Start a new factory?

Or do we wait out the noise?

Laura Escobar says: No. We don’t wait.

Because the noise never stops.

The only path forward is through action, conviction, and shared focus. Homebuilding must not treat structural issues as background problems for "better times."

A Blueprint for Unity

To borrow from Escobar: Uncertainty is always the headline. But homeownership is the constant. And it’s our job to keep it within reach.

That job has a blueprint:

• Name the priorities: Choose two or three. As an industry.
• Commit operationally: Design your business, your team, and your resources around solving those few things well.
• Measure what matters: Progress is slow and nonlinear. But track it. Share it. Celebrate it.
• Work together: Not as silos. Not in competition. But in coalition. Builders, developers, suppliers, advocates.

Robert Dietz reminded us that the demographics are in housing’s favor. Millennials and Gen Z want homes. The demand is there. But the system built to supply those homes is out of alignment.

Laura Escobar brought it home: We can realign. We have to start.

If Not Now, When?

There may never be a better time than now to act. Not because the conditions are ideal. But because the consequences of inaction are too dire.

Escobar’s challenge is the clearest rallying cry housing has heard in a long time. Simplicity. Unity. Resolve.

Start with two or three. Solve those together.

Everything else will begin to move.