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The Trump administration is taking steps to combat housing affordability. Secretary Scott Turner and Secretary Doug Bergum announced the formation of a task force to identify federal land where affordable housing can be built. Jessica Lautz, National Association of Realtors Deputy Chief Economist and Vice President of Research joins us now. Jessica, what would efforts like this ultimately take? And then, what type of relief could we see on the affordability side if this were to come to fruition?

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, thank you for having me back. So, I mean, certainly if we can free up any land to actually, uh, build homes, especially at affordable price points, that could be some relief for home buyers, uh, who really have been shut out of the market in the last few years, especially as we think about this inventory crisis. Now, if we look at areas, perhaps like Las Vegas, that could free up some inventory, and we know that home prices have really been on the rise in that area.

And so what else does the federal government also in tandem to just freeing up land need to do to combat the affordability crisis?

So when we think about the affordability crisis and we think about the inventory crisis, a lot of this is actually based in local markets, in local regulations. As so, as we think about this, it really is helping to free up building at the local level. And some of that really does come down to nimbyism, not wanting this new development in my backyard, uh, but really thinking about how we do need that development to come in. Uh, so perhaps thinking about adaptive reuse, uh, using those vacant hotel motels, uh, those vacant schools to bring in residential units could really be helpful in local areas.

You know, this is interesting because we've also seen some of the the climate considerations and insurability in specific markets also impact the home buyer sentiment and ultimate kind of thought process. How are you kind of measuring that up against some of the typical hotspots that we've seen in years past versus where some of that insurability is taking a hold among buyer mindsets right now?

Well, certainly this is a nationwide issue when we think about, uh, just adding on insurance into the cost of home. And so what we think about, perhaps, weather events happening, uh, in localized areas that actually does impact on a nationwide scale. But I think what we're looking at is home buyers really factoring in the total cost of homeownership. So thinking about insurance costs, but also thinking about what are my commuting costs if I now have to be into work five days a week when perhaps I could work remote. All of those are big factors when we think about how consumers are approaching home ownership. And perhaps that's been a little different than what we have seen during the pandemic years versus where we are right now.

All right, I got to hustle to my finish here, but I want to get into two topics. One of them, spring home buying season. What are your projections there? What are you anticipating?

Well, certainly we are expecting that there will be more homes coming into the market. More inventory could help for consumers, and we've started to see a trickle of that, certainly. Uh, hopefully home buyers are really having better traction this year than they had in the last two years with more inventory and lower interest rates as well.

And then another major topic here, especially as we are considering and going into that home buying season, and how this could prove beneficial or a major pivotal season for different ethnic groups, and particularly the National Association of Realtors, NAR, study that looked across Black home ownership still trailing white home ownership in 2023. What did we ultimately see kind of transpire into 2024 for Black American home ownership, and what are some of the pivotal aspects of this home buying season, uh, that could ultimately, perhaps, narrow that gap and the 30% trailing that you were mentioning?

Yeah, so brand new report hot off the presses from NAR just yesterday. Uh, what we saw is a growth actually in Black home ownership. That being said, that gap is very persistent. It's still, uh, nearly 30 points as wide as what we see for the white home ownership rate, which is actually above 70%. So when we look at that gap, it's very persistent. What I do think is important, though, is that we did see growth there. The other thing that is very important is that for all non-white home buyers, uh, what we see is nearly half of them are actually first-time home buyers, really led by Black home buyers, uh, having a really predominant share of being first-time home buyers in the market. So really trying to enter into home ownership and really surpass the odds.

I want to get off the sidelines myself, Jessica. I'm I'm I'm ready to throw my hat in the ring on some bidding, uh, soon. I got to save up a little bit more though. Jessica, appreciate the time.

Thank you.