Lisa Escobar, head of Lennar Mortgage LEN 0.47%, said that on Monday at the annual Mortgage Bankers Association conference in Denver, Colorado.
Escobar, who was just named chair of the MBA, told the 275,000 members of the trade group that she would work to make policymakers and government officials more aware of the problem of affordable housing and would push for fewer rules on mortgage loans and home building.
Lennar Mortgage is the lending part of Lennar, which is the second-largest home builder in the country. Since 2002, Escobar has been with the company.
“Enough is enough”
A lack of homes for sale is driving up prices, which is something that Escobar said, along with a lot of what the housing industry, and especially builders, have been saying for the past few years.
The rate on a 30-year mortgage has been average close to 7% for the past few years, and prices have hit all-time highs.
Escobar said that the U.S. is missing 1.5 million homes and that the number of families is being outpaced by the number of homes on the market.
Escobar said in prepared comments, “Decades of over-regulation have made it harder and harder to build new homes and fix up old ones.” “It’s almost impossible for many small builders right now.” More homes are being bought, but the prices of the ones that are already there are going up even faster.
She also talked about how zoning laws make it hard to build more homes in many parts of the country. In the U.S., about 75% of land is zoned for single-family houses, she said. A study from the National Association of house Builders in 2021 found that rules set by the government raise the price of a new house by an average of $94,000.
She also said, “The costs of labor and building materials have gone up by 31% since the COVID pandemic began.”
Escobar said she would bring the issue to the attention of politicians and regulators in order to lower the cost of housing, especially by increasing the number of homes on the market.
She told him, “Enough is enough.” “This is going to be a simple message for all policymakers in Washington, D.C.” Stop talking about how affordable something is and start making it happen.