Jake Day told lawmakers this month that 42% of young renters are weighing an exit over housing costs, as builders put a number on how much government regulation adds to the price of a new home.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
ANNAPOLIS — Maryland’s top housing official told state lawmakers this month that nearly half of the state’s young renters are thinking about leaving, a striking admission from inside an administration that has layered on tenant protections in recent years while only recently moving to ease the permitting and regulatory hurdles builders blame for rising costs.
Housing Secretary Jake Day testified before the House Economic Matters Committee on Sept. 15 that “42% of young renters say they’re considering leaving the state.” The reason they give, he told lawmakers, is simple: the cost of a place to live.
“42% of young renters say they’re considering leaving the state.”
Day went further. He told the committee that 91% of full-time Maryland workers now view affordability as a major or moderate obstacle to buying a home, and that the state’s housing shortage is estimated at roughly 100,000 units. Maryland’s high costs, he said, are steering people away from choosing to live in the state, and there is a lot more work to do.
Day was careful to note that no single factor explains the crisis. He pointed to land costs, construction costs, financing costs, taxes and fees, and, he said, perhaps most of all, the time and uncertainty a project faces before it ever breaks ground.
The testimony landed alongside numbers from the building industry that put a price tag on one specific piece of that list: government regulation.
Lori Graf, CEO of the Maryland Building Industry Association, told lawmakers that complying with health, environmental and other government regulations accounts for an estimated 26.4% of the final cost of a new home nationally, and that Maryland’s own number could run even higher.
“It’s a national figure, but it definitely translates to Maryland.”
“It’s a national figure, but it definitely translates to Maryland,” Graf said.
Her organization estimates that every $1,000 added to the price of a mid-priced new home prices roughly 2,955 additional Maryland households out of homeownership. Multiplied against a shortage already counted in six figures, the math adds up quickly.
By the numbers, from testimony given Sept. 15:
- 42% of young Maryland renters say they’re considering leaving the state over housing costs.
- 91% of full-time Maryland workers call affordability a major or moderate barrier to homeownership.
- Regulatory compliance accounts for an estimated 26.4% of the final cost of a new home nationally; Graf said Maryland’s own figure could run higher.
- The state’s estimated housing shortage stands at roughly 100,000 units.
Republican Del. Steven J. Arentz, whose District 36 covers Kent, Queen Anne’s, Cecil and Caroline counties, pushed the point further, naming the Maryland Department of Health and the Maryland Department of the Environment as agencies whose rules routinely slow builders down.
“We have a tremendous amount of regulations that it’s just crushing business,” Arentz said.
“We have a tremendous amount of regulations that it’s just crushing business.”
To his credit, Day did not try to talk his way around the criticism. He told the committee the state deserves the same scrutiny as its local partners and said Annapolis has to strike a balance between environmental and tenant protections and the cost of actually getting a project built. In May, Gov. Wes Moore signed the Maryland Housing Certainty Act, which grants developers vested rights for at least five years once a project is approved and generally delays counties from collecting impact fees or excise taxes until construction is complete and the project meets certificate of occupancy requirements. It takes effect Oct. 1. Builders had pushed for exactly that kind of certainty since the administration’s broader housing package stalled in the General Assembly the year before.
Critics note the administration’s record runs both ways. In 2024, Moore signed the Renters’ Rights and Stabilization Act, which created a right of first refusal letting tenants of rental properties with three or fewer units make an offer before the property is sold, along with an annual Maryland Tenants’ Bill of Rights. The same day, he also signed the Housing Expansion and Affordability Act, a supply-side zoning law requiring local governments to allow increased density for qualifying affordable housing projects and barring local bans on manufactured and modular homes in single-family zones. Day did not cite either 2024 law as a cost driver in his Sept. 15 testimony. His own list stuck to land, construction, financing, taxes, fees and regulatory delay.
But Republicans see a broader pattern. Builders kept pressing lawmakers over regulatory costs and permitting delays even after the 2024 package passed, and it took until this year for the General Assembly to pass the Housing Certainty Act’s vesting and fee-timing fixes. Critics say that gap suggests the 2024 reforms did not go far enough to address the costs and delays builders had been warning about, the same problem Day described to the committee.
Maryland’s housing debate is increasingly about not just how much housing to build, but how much government adds to the time and cost of building it.
The hearing produced no legislative fix, and lawmakers are not expected to take up large-scale regulatory changes until the General Assembly reconvenes in January. What it did produce was a rare moment of agreement between a Democratic administration, the building industry and the Republican lawmakers who have argued for years that Annapolis’ own rulebook is part of the affordability problem, not just the market.
What to Watch
- Whether the 2027 General Assembly session includes legislation to study or reduce the cumulative regulatory cost of new housing construction.
- How the Maryland Housing Certainty Act performs after it takes effect Oct. 1, and whether builders report shorter project timelines.
- Whether future state or industry surveys show the share of young renters considering leaving Maryland rising or falling.
Sourcing: This article draws primarily on Danielle J. Brown’s Sept. 16, 2026, report for Maryland Matters, “Developers say housing regulations drive up costs that price Marylanders out of homeownership,” which documented testimony from Housing Secretary Jake Day, Maryland Building Industry Association CEO Lori Graf and Del. Steven J. Arentz before the House Economic Matters Committee on Sept. 15, 2026. Details on the Maryland Housing Certainty Act came from Maryland Matters’ May 26, 2026, report on the legislative session’s final bill signing, a legal summary published by Ballard Spahr LLP, and the Maryland Department of Legislative Services’ fiscal and policy note on House Bill 548. Details on the 2024 Renters’ Rights and Stabilization Act, including its right-of-first-refusal scope, came from legal summaries published by Rosenberg Martin Greenberg and Silverman Thompson, along with the Maryland State Bar Association’s archived bill summary. Details on the same-day Housing Expansion and Affordability Act came from the Maryland General Assembly’s chaptered bill text (Chapter 122) and DHCD’s public FAQ on the law. Del. Arentz’s committee assignment and district were confirmed through the Maryland General Assembly’s official website, mgaleg.maryland.gov.
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