Two listing portals that compete for the same agents, rival brokerage brands, the homebuilders’ lobby and Habitat for Humanity put their names on the same document Sept. 15, launching a national campaign built on a single argument: if the country wants more homes, local governments have to let people build them.
The campaign is called Let America Build. Realtor.com announced it from Austin, Texas, and the founding participants named in the announcement include Realtor.com, Zillow, T3 Sixty, eXp Realty and NextHome, the National Association of Home Builders, Veterans United Home Loans, Habitat for Humanity, ICON, Land Use Labs, HomeServices of America, the Asian Real Estate Association of America, the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance and the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.
No budget was disclosed. The campaign describes itself as a public awareness effort rather than a lobbying operation, and the announcement states plainly that it "does not endorse or oppose candidates, political parties or ballot measures."
The three numbers the campaign is built on
The participants anchored their case in research each of them owns.
Realtor.com’s housing supply gap analysis puts the shortfall at 4.03 million homes. NAHB’s work on regulatory cost holds that government regulation, taxes, fees and related costs add more than 26% to the price of an average new single-family home. And Zillow research found that putting one home on each of the more than 300,000 small vacant lots currently listed for sale would close 6.3% of the national deficit.
Those figures point at the same target: not federal money, but the local rules that govern what can be built, where, and how long approval takes.
What the campaign is asking for
The campaign site hosts explainers on land use, permitting, housing types and construction methods, plus a toolkit aimed at residents who want to raise the issue with local officials. The pitch is that the decisive fights are municipal.
"If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together, and with a problem as big as America’s home shortage, it is time we go together," said Damian Eales, CEO of Realtor.com. "Earlier this year, I challenged the industry to come together and unify. Let America Build is a result of that call."
Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman was more specific about the asks. "We know what’s driving it and we know what will fix it: streamlining permitting, modernizing zoning and unlocking land that’s already there," he said.
NAHB CEO Jim Tobin framed the effort as aimed at "removing inefficient zoning rules, unnecessary regulations, permitting delays and other barriers that keep builders from delivering more affordable, attainable homes."
Sara Bronin, CEO of Land Use Labs, brought the group’s most concrete claim about scale. "Our team — which has sifted through 1.4 million pages of zoning codes — sees the consequences of red tape up close, day in and day out," she said.
Other participants tied it to their own constituencies. Nathan Long, CEO of Veterans United Home Loans, said that for many veterans and military families "the challenge today isn’t the desire to own a home — it’s simply finding one they can afford." Chris Kelly, president and CEO of HomeServices of America, said the supply problem "has been years in the making." Alex Cruz, executive director of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance, said expanding supply is part of removing barriers his members’ clients face. Leo Pareja, CEO of eXp Realty and NextHome, called for "more options, fewer barriers, faster paths from plan to reality" at the local level.
Timed to a new federal law
The launch follows the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, the bipartisan law that ties federal housing grants to local home construction and gives states and localities new tools and incentives. The campaign’s framing is that the law shifted the action downward — Washington has set terms, and what happens next depends on city councils, county boards and planning commissions.
Let America Build grows out of an earlier Realtor.com campaign introduced at SXSW in 2025, now widened into an industry-wide effort under its own banner.
Why this one is unusual
Awareness campaigns are cheap to announce and hard to measure, and this one arrives without a stated budget, a legislative agenda or a target list of jurisdictions. What makes it worth noting is the roster: Zillow and Realtor.com compete directly, eXp and HomeServices compete for the same agents, and builders and brokerages do not always line up the same way on local land-use questions. Getting that group to sign one statement about zoning is itself the news.
Whether it moves anything is a separate question, and the answer will show up in permit counts rather than press releases. Recent local action has cut both ways: San Jose, Calif., has moved to quadruple allowable density in single-family neighborhoods, while affordability has kept deteriorating nationally, with NAHB’s own cost-of-housing index worsening in the second quarter as higher rates bit.
