Former Federal Housing Administration Commissioner Frank Cassidy said the United States cannot subsidize its way out of a housing affordability squeeze and must clear regulatory barriers that he estimates add 20% to 40% to construction costs, telling Newsmax the country faces a supply-driven crisis as the 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 6.58% in the latest Freddie Mac survey and existing-home prices hit a record $440,600 in June.

Cassidy, who stepped down as FHA commissioner and Housing and Urban Development assistant secretary for housing on June 1, appeared on "Saturday Report" and pinned blame on chronic underbuilding and local permitting drag.

"The fundamental problem is that America has not built enough homes," he said. Twenty to 40% of new-construction cost, he added, "is some type of bureaucratic red tape that ultimately gets passed on to the American consumer."

He described a market squeezed from both sides.

Roughly 4.09 million existing homes changed hands at an annualized rate in June, a 2.4% monthly decline that came alongside the record median price.

Cassidy attributed the imbalance largely to a rate-lock effect: "So many Americans who refinanced their mortgages in 2020 and 2021 at 2 and 3%" are unwilling to swap those loans for one near today's rate.

Cassidy pointed to the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which became federal law in July after passing Congress with wide bipartisan margins, as a structural response.

He called it "the biggest piece of housing legislation probably to ever pass" and said it "prevents giant Wall Street corporations from buying up single-family homes and renting those homes back to Americans."

President Donald Trump, he said, "signed the executive order that set the direction, and ultimately Congress took action and passed the Road to Housing bill."

Trump signed that executive order in January restricting large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.

The measure also nudges municipalities toward faster permitting, a shift Cassidy welcomed.

"Housing is very much a local issue," he said. "We don't need bureaucratic politicians in D.C. telling small town America the best practices to build new homes."

He said the average age of a first-time buyer has climbed to nearly 40, up from the 20s a generation ago.

Cassidy contrasted permitting-friendly markets with restrictive ones.

In "Austin, Texas, and the Southeast and certain markets in Florida," he said, prices are "stabilizing and in some cases coming down because they've allowed new home construction," while California and New York remain out of reach.

"You cannot subsidize your way out of a housing crisis. You could only build your way out of it," he said.

"We have to let builders build. That's the only way to solve this problem."

He returned repeatedly to what he called the bureaucratic tax on housing.

"When there's not enough supply, housing prices increase and get to a point where they're unaffordable," he said. "As a country, that is a sad thing."

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