Housing Supply Accelerator: An Interview with National Association of Realtors President Kevin Sears

[00:00:00.730] - Emily Pasi

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the APA podcast.

[00:00:09.140] - Emily Pasi

I'm your host, Emily Pasi, Director of Public Affairs at the American Planning Association. Joining me today is Kevin Sears, President of the National Association of Realtors. Kevin and NAR are core partners, along with APA and the National League of Cities, for the Housing Supply Accelerator. The Housing Supply Accelerator is a national campaign to improve local capacity, identify critical solutions, and speed reforms that enable communities and developers to work together to produce, preserve, and provide a diverse range of quality housing by realigning the efforts of public and private stakeholders to meet housing needs at the local level.

[00:00:53.210] - Kevin Sears

All right, Kevin, well, great to have you today on APA's podcast.

[00:01:00.560] - Emily Pasi

Very much looking forward to talking about our partnership today on the Housing Supply Accelerator.

[00:01:05.650] - Kevin Sears

Well, I'm very excited to be with you today, Emily. Thank you.

[00:01:09.070] - Emily Pasi

So let's jump into it. Why is it important for community planners, realtors, home builders, elected leaders, and bankers to come together right now to embrace a shared vision for local progress on housing supply?

[00:01:23.110] - Kevin Sears

It's really all hands on deck. We need everybody. We need everybody marching or rolling in the same direction, since I use a, I guess, a voting metaphor saying all hands on deck, rolling in the same direction when it comes to housing because of the severe and significant lack of inventory we're seeing across the country. There may be some pockets where inventory is increasing, but that still doesn't mean that we're anywhere near being in the clear. As best our economists can tell, we're about five and a half million units shy of where we need to be. And just over the past 20, 30 For years, when you look at the population growth in the United States of America, and tens and tens of millions of people extra in the country, and we're just not building enough. So we need everybody to be singing from the same hymnal.

[00:02:15.190] - Emily Pasi

And how are realtors impacted by the housing crisis, specifically?

[00:02:20.890] - Kevin Sears

This year over year, we're seeing fewer homes being sold. And so that's having a significant impact on our realtor members across the country. Listen, Listen, we're in business to help people achieve the American dream. We're 1.5 million entrepreneurs, for the most part, independent sales contractors. And if we do not help people achieve their goal of homeownership, then we are not getting a paycheck. And so there's a significant impact when we see the housing market being slow, sluggish or down. And we're definitely seeing the number of sales than it has been historically.

[00:03:03.360] - Emily Pasi

And how do current market trends, like high interest rates, compound existing barriers or create new opportunities for growing the nation's housing supply?

[00:03:13.100] - Kevin Sears

The high interest rate is certainly compounding the issue right now with lower inventory. But the inventory question is the chicken and the egg, which comes first. We do know there are people that want to sell their home, but they're looking to say, well, there's nothing on the market for me to buy. And so if they don't believe that they can buy something, then they're going to hold off selling. And it just exacerbates the problem. This is a problem that's been identified over the last few years. It's nothing that we can fix overnight. But I think having lower interest rates will create affordability in the market and maybe motivate some people to sell. The question is, if a home seller has a 3 or 4% interest rate, would they take on a mortgage at 6% or 6.5 %? For me, the answer is yes. And the reason being that over the last several years, they've certainly built a lot of equity in the home. So it's not about an affordability issue. It's more about getting over the mental piece of it saying, Oh, I'm going to have a higher interest rate. But what we need to do is if we can have the conversation, explain how they're postured in the market to make it happen.

[00:04:31.430] - Kevin Sears

But right now, we're just seeing too many people sitting on the sidelines because of the lack of inventory and the higher interest rates.

[00:04:41.020] - Emily Pasi

Why was it important for the National Association of Realtors to be part of the Housing Supply Accelerator?

[00:04:47.480] - Kevin Sears

I think that it was very important for the National Association of Realtors to be part of the Housing Supply Accelerator because there's no one solution that fits all. And through the Housing Supply Accelerator, there were over 40 different types of policies that were identified so that it could be almost custom for a local market. The housing market is just like politics. It's all local, right? And so we're not going to have one overarching policy that will fit everyone. So with the National Association of Realtors collaborating on the Housing Supply Accelerator, as I mentioned earlier, we've got 1.5 million realtor members across the country in every community. And it's the local communities that know what the specific problem is and how they can fix it. And by using the Housing Supply Accelerator, hopefully, they'll be able to develop something to assist their local communities.

[00:05:48.840] - Emily Pasi

I think there's a lot of promise there, Kevin. We at the American Planning Association are already seeing our local members or statewide organizations come together with statewide organizations from the National Association of Realtors, the Homebuilders, and other partners, the National League of Cities, and the Mortgage Bankers, who are all part of the Housing Supply Accelerator, come together and really work together toward solutions. And that's what this partnership is all about. As you said, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. It looks different in different places. And I know we're grateful here at the American Planning Association to have this partnership. Let's dig in a little bit more into the work of the partnership and talk about how the policy solutions identified in the Housing Supply Accelerator playbook help realtors address the shortfall in homes available to prospective home buyers.

[00:06:45.140] - Kevin Sears

Well, here's one of the things about housing. Housing is a bipartisan issue. And so it doesn't matter what the politics are in your local community, in your county, in your state. We've done studies that show, or a recent national study from the University of Michigan shows that for Americans, the financial ability to be able to afford a home was ranked almost equally across parties, about 70 %, whether it's Democrats, Republicans, or independent voters. This is something that is very important to them. And so by working together, collaborating and offering a variable of solutions for the local communities to figure out their housing inventory issues, I think that it's very beneficial because, as I said, this is bipartisan or a non-partisan issue. It affects everybody.

[00:07:40.710] - Emily Pasi

Absolutely. And I think Pew Research recently turned out some good studies as well, indicating the very same thing, that there's strong demand for reform, for new approaches to local housing solutions moving forward. And I think the work of the Accelerator is certainly aimed at helping communities do just that. You, as an individual professional, have more than 30 years of experience selling homes in Massachusetts. Congratulations on a robust and fantastic career. Where are you seeing land use inhibiting access to homeownership? I also want to throw in there for you, where are you seeing land use reform, driven by plans, really serve as a catalyst for increasing housing production?

[00:08:28.990] - Kevin Sears

Well, what I'll tell you about my time here in Massachusetts helping people buy, sell, and invest in real estate is widely recognized as not only the right thing to do, but a great aspirational thing. The most frustrating part, however, is that while people will espouse that they want more folks to be able to get in the housing market, there's this thing called nimbyism, and they don't want it in their backyard, not in my backyard. And so that's been the most frustrating thing is as we come up with proposals about how to increase our inventory, unfortunately, part of that has to do with density. And there are folks that are just saying, No, we support it elsewhere, but not here. And so that's been a real challenge. Where we've seen some success is that as our population ages, we're seeing people wanting to age in home or age in place. We are pushing legislation that has to do with accessory dwelling units or ADUs. And we are championing ADUs by right so that our elderly can age with family members, age in dignity. And rather than having to go through in Massachusetts, 351 city and towns and the different zoning, we should have the right to be able to do that.

[00:09:48.980] - Kevin Sears

And if we can have ADUs by right, then we could free up some desperately needed inventory for folks who would be willing to downsize if they had a nice place to go. And by building on to an existing single family structure and accessory dwelling unit, that's a great solution to helping with our inventory shortage right now.

[00:10:13.610] - Emily Pasi

Yes. You mentioned Massachusetts and some of the ADU work by right there that's happening now. Just even a couple of weeks ago, we know the governor signed into law a new bill that would do just that. And so huge in the right direction there, and hopefully, will have a very positive impact on the communities that we're all talking about supporting increasing that inventory in.

[00:10:39.870] - Kevin Sears

Absolutely.

[00:10:41.570] - Emily Pasi

The Housing Supply Accelerator playbook spotlights tons of case studies across the 90 pages of policy recommendations that you mentioned earlier. And it looks at communities committed to really increasing the production of diverse, attainable, and equitable housing solutions. Which is what we're advocating for through this playbook. What can we learn from these places, Kevin?

[00:11:06.730] - Kevin Sears

Yeah, well, there are some great examples of tremendous success that has been had by taking advantage of these. The National Association of Realtors, who are our realtor party in our community and outreach grants, we offer local associations and state associations grants to try and develop plans, which would correspond very nicely with ideas that are highlighted in the playbook. And so by sharing this with our well over 1,000 realtor associations across the country, we have high hope and expectations that we'll be able to have more examples of being able to use the playbook to increase the inventory. And as I talked about with the accessory dwelling units, we're huge in promoting density or even development near commuter rail and mass transit. So there's all different sorts of things that can be done. It's just a matter of finding what's right for your local community.

[00:12:10.550] - Emily Pasi

Absolutely. And the playbook offers you that flexibility to really dig in and to start where you are in the process, whether it's at the very beginning or if you're on the other side of the spectrum, it really means you and your community where you are. Kevin, what can cities and communities do to be better partners to realtors and increasing housing inventory and choice?

[00:12:34.410] - Kevin Sears

Well, this is where I would call on our realtor members, real estate professionals, just this community-minded people to have the conversations with your local regulators and elected officials. At the end of the day, we need to make things easier for construction, for building, for zoning, for permitting. It's a shame when I I talk to developers and they let me know how much it costs per unit before a shovel even goes in the ground. Red tape is a tremendous barrier to development and construction. I'm not saying do away with it, but we've got to streamline it. We've got to make it simpler. And we have to, if we can, incentivize people who are willing to spend their money and invest in the local communities. We need to incentivize them to do that because of the severe shortage and lack of inventory that we currently have.

[00:13:33.620] - Emily Pasi

And rest assured, APA planners are with you and doing what they can across the country to make sure that they are moving forward with changes to outdated policies and moving those forward so that we have more diverse housing supply. Kevin, are there any other things that we didn't have a question for, but that you want to put out here as a part of the podcast?

[00:14:00.850] - Kevin Sears

Well, I just really appreciate the opportunity to be with you today and have a conversation. Listen, it's up to all of us as we started with to come together to solve this problem. I looked at this way at the end of the day, there's no National Association of Home Buyers or no National Association of Home Sellers. It's the National Association of Realtors. And we're here to work with whomever is willing and able to help with the housing shortage that we currently find ourselves in. I just think it's so important for to not only continue the conversations, but to force these conversations upon the decision makers in our cities and towns, because we need everybody together to find our way out of this housing supply crisis that we're in.

[00:14:43.460] - Emily Pasi

And as you said at the beginning, It's an all hands on deck situation, so you can count the community planners and APA in. Kevin, thank you so much for your time today. I look forward to working with you in the future.

[00:14:56.250] - Kevin Sears

My pleasure, Emily. Thank you.

[00:15:00.040] - Emily Pasi

Thanks for listening to another episode of the APA podcast. Visit APA's website to learn more about the Housing Supply Accelerator. To hear previous episodes, visit us at planning.org/podcast. You can also subscribe to the APA podcast on Apple podcast, SoundCloud, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcast.