A Letter to the President of the United States

Mr. President,

I'm not yet a lobbyist nor have I've ever written a letter like this in my life. I'm a builder and a realtor from a small town in Ohio — Canal Winchester — and writing on behalf of my people… The young couple counting every dollar. The single mom. The widow starting over. The local builder who has big dreams for his community.

I'm writing because the American Dream is clearly on fire, and the people who lit the match are cosplaying Smokey the Bear.

Let me tell you what I see, because I see it every. single. day…

A handful of giant, publicly traded homebuilders have quietly strangled the industry. Nationally, they now build more than half the new homes in America — up from a quarter just twenty years ago. In some cities it's nearly 100%. A short jog down I-71, in your beloved seven hills of Cincinnati, the top ten behemoths put up 98 out of every 100 new houses.

It’s clear they build cheapest product the law will allow, then lasso the fatigued home-buyer into submission, convincing them that they on mean are actually asking for less… Homes they call “Custom” with only pre-selections… Developments void of character — except that one appeasing “Greenspace”… And not one true give a damn for the citizen signing the papers. They strip out every decision that turns a house into a home — because choices cost money and slow down the line — but we let them call it "custom" and laugh all the way to the bank.

A bank they often own.

That's the part most folks don't know… These same companies run their own mortgage arms. Eight out of ten of one giant's buyers finance through the builder's own lender. They use that to buy down the interest rate and move people in on the monthly payment — so purchase price is an after thought through the day they sign.

The local builder who lives in your town and answers to you at the grocery store cannot compete with that. It was never meant to be a fair fight. It’s obvious it was actually designed to eradicate them.

And when a good town tries to hold the line — tries to keep its standards, its character, the things that made people want to move there — these companies go to work in rooms the community is never invited into. They tell the city building officials: lower your standards, or the growth goes somewhere else, and the tax money with it. They put a gun to the head of every small town in America - wielding our “housing shortage” as their license to skimp.

This is no longer a fair market correcting itself… This is monopolization of the American Dream. And the everyday American is the one who pays for it — with mostly their dignity…

Mr. President, you have spoken about restoring American greatness and beautiful American building. I'm asking you to aim that fight at the place it's needed most: the American Dream of Home-ownership. Here is where your administration has real power to act, today, and I'm asking you to target your power…

First, level the playing field on financing — give local builders the same access. The giants own their own mortgage companies, and they use them as a weapon. They dangle their biggest rate buydowns and their closing-cost help on one condition: you finance through them. That means a family looking at a home from a local builder — or an existing home on a good old street — literally cannot get the same deal, no matter how much better the house is. The buyer isn't choosing the best home. They're being herded toward the only one with the discount attached. That's not a free market. That's a thumb on the scale. What could a local builder do if there was even one tenth of the incentive to build a spec home?

I'm asking you to take the thumb off. Direct the FHFA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA to end the loopholes that let builder-owned lenders bury rate buydowns and hidden costs inside the price of a home, and to stop letting a builder's financing perks be chained to using the builder's own bank. Give every American homebuyer the same shot at a fair rate — whether they're buying a brand-new home, a home from a local builder down the road, or the hundred-year-old house on Main Street. And if a builder owns the bank, the buyer deserves to see the real price in plain daylight, in writing, before they sign. No more rigged choices dressed up as deals. Let all-sized builders compete on merit.

Second, turn the Justice Department and the FTC loose on housing consolidation. When a handful of companies control ninety-eight percent of a city's new homes (Cincinnati), that is a competition problem and the American taxpayer is the victim. Investigate the land-banking and the lot-control tactics that starve small and local builders out of the business before they can ever lay a foundation.

Third, stop subsidizing a race to the bottom — and stop pricing the local builder out of the game… Here's something most folks never see… The maze of federal rules, permits, environmental reviews, and red tape that sits on top of every new home isn't free, and it kills a builder that has no access to capital markets of the elites. A billion-dollar builder spreads that cost across a thousand houses and barely feels it. The local builder — the one putting up five homes a year — eats it and it buries him. Same rulebook. Wildly exclusive. The giants act as if they loathe regulation. They love it, because it kills their competition. It’s their barrier to entry.

So the little guy never gets a fair shot — and you, the homebuyer, never get the better house he would've built you.

Fourth, clear the path for the local guy. The local builder, the small contractor, the tradesman who lives where he builds — he is the answer, not the problem. Direct your agencies to find every federal rule, every financing barrier, every regulatory thumb on the scale that favors the billion-dollar builder over the hometown one, and remove it. A man who has to look his neighbor in the eye builds a better house. He always has.

I'm not asking you to make housing free. I'm not even asking you to make it cheaper by making it worse — they're already doing that, and it's the whole problem. I'm asking you to make it honest again. To make it possible, again, for an ordinary American to buy a home they can be proud of, from someone who has to answer for it.

The American family is the point.

The Dream is burning, Mr. President. But it is not too late to rebuild it — for the next generation, and the one after that.

I’ll help however I can. I'll bring my hammer, and my social media crew of course.

Respectfully,

Kevin Ilich
Founder, REBUILT — Canal Winchester, Ohio