Tillis, colleagues introduce bill to alleviate housing shortage and costs

As home sales dropped to their lowest level in nine months in June and prices hit an all-time high, North Carolina Republican US Sen. Thom Tillis is among a group of senators who recently introduced bipartisan legislation to increase the housing supply and reduce costs.

He, along with Sens. Tim Scott, R-SC; Ruben Gallego, D-AZ; Katie Britt, R-AL; Brian Schatz, D-HI; Mike Crapo, R-ID; and Alex Padilla, D-CA, introduced The Housing Supply Expansion Act of 2025.

“I’m proud to support this commonsense legislation that expands housing options for hardworking families in North Carolina and across the country,” Tillis said in a press release. “By modernizing the definition of manufactured homes, we can encourage innovative and affordable designs and help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership.”

The bill modernizes the federal definition of “manufactured housing” to include modular or prefabricated homes built without a permanent chassis. By allowing off-chassis manufactured homes, the bill expands consumer access to more efficient and cost-effective designs, providing greater architectural flexibility to better integrate into existing neighborhoods.

According to officials, eliminating the chassis, the steel frame that is permanently attached to a manufactured house during construction, could help ease the housing shortage.

Right now, the permanent chassis must be retained even after permanent installation onto land. Doing so limits architectural flexibility by requiring the house to be installed higher off the ground to account for the chassis’ vertical height, makes basements less practical, and effectively precludes using HUD Code construction for upper floors due to the weight and bulk of the chassis.

Manufactured homes also compete with site-built construction houses, which experts say have an unfair advantage. Many state laws and local zoning codes restrict or exclude manufactured homes, often based on architectural features like the congressionally mandated permanent chassis.

The housing shortage isn’t expected to let up anytime soon, and Realtor.com says home sales could fall to a 30-year low as mortgage rates continue to hamper affordability.

North Carolina also affected by housing shortage

North Carolina is no stranger to the housing shortage. Many factors are contributing to that issue.

As one of the fastest-growing states in the country, adding some 165,000 new residents in 2024 alone, the supply is not meeting the demand.

Even before Hurricane Helene struck, housing inventory in the Asheville area was unquestionably inadequate. According to a new housing-market tracker from the American Enterprise Institute, Asheville’s housing shortage is estimated at 4,913 units, or 10% of the city’s existing units.

Other markets with constrictions include the college towns of Boone and Chapel Hill (each with a housing shortage equivalent to about 10% of current inventory), along with Wilmington (6%), Durham (5.5%), Raleigh (5.2%), and Charlotte (5.2%). Greenville (4%), Cary (4%), Gastonia (4%), Concord (3.8%), Winston-Salem (3.3%) High Point (3.3%), Greensboro (3%), Jacksonville (2.7%), Apex (2.5%), and Fayetteville (.9%) are in better shape by this metric.

Also, the median new home price in the state is $467,506, with $139,128 being the income needed to qualify for a home at that price.

According to a statewide study commissioned by the NC Chamber Foundation, NC REALTORS®, and the North Carolina Home Builders Association, North Carolina also faces an expected housing inventory deficit of 764,478 units (322,360 rental units and 442,118 for-sale units) by 2029.

Realtor.com said that its Housing Forecast Midyear Update suggests that this year’s housing market will look similar to last year’s, with affordability concerns weighing heavily on sales volume and national home prices growing at a sluggish pace.

According to the website, Raleigh had the 10th slowest market, with homes staying on the market 10 days longer than last year.  

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