Every conversation about housing eventually arrives at the same number. The Home Builders Association of Michigan estimates that regulation adds roughly $94,000 to the price of a new home in this state.² When John Bitely, a West Michigan builder, first heard that figure, he didn’t believe it. He told the association the number looked inflated, then spent three days going through his own project costs to prove it wrong. He came within 1 percent.³

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The National Association of Home Builders’ 2026 updated estimate puts the national figure at roughly $132,000, and building code changes over the past decade alone account for about $24,000 of it.⁴ Michigan builds fewer homes as a share of its housing stock than every Great Lakes state except Illinois.⁵ Something stands in the way, and it is not a shortage of dirt.

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The fix begins with the code. Not every regulation is red tape. Fire codes save lives, and nobody proposes to touch them. But Michigan has layered on requirements over the past decade whose gains in safety and efficiency never matched their cost. The 2021 energy code, which the state adopted over builders’ objections, adds an estimated $15,000 per home—in exchange for savings so modest that the homebuilders association argues the code violates Michigan’s own seven-year payback law.⁶ We should review the most recently adopted regulations first, with a simple test: did this rule deliver real gains in safety or efficiency, or did it deliver only cost? Rules that fail the test go.

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Permitting is the other half. Permitting decisions belong with local governments, but local control cannot mean unlimited delay. Today a municipality can require a traffic study, then a wetland study, then a revised traffic study, then a new site plan, with no deadline and no end. Builders don’t fight this; they leave. The state’s homebuilders association points to one recent Michigan project that took four years because of the back-and-forth with local government.⁷

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The reform is straightforward. Local governments keep the decision, but they must make it within a required timeline. They can approve, deny, or request specific, enumerated changes. They cannot request studies indefinitely until the developer throws up his hands and walks away. A “no” is a legitimate answer. Silence is not.