It is September of a midterm election year. Inflation remains a problem. Mortgage rates are back around 7%. The existing-home market is cooling, new construction is slowing, and housing affordability remains badly strained.

You would be forgiven for thinking you have seen this movie before.

In some ways, you have. But while the basic plot looks familiar, quite a bit has changed since 2022.

The Same

The fundamental housing problem has not gone away.

Earlier this summer, the median existing-home price reached $440,600. Now mortgage rates are back around 7%, putting another squeeze on purchasing power. Existing-home sales fell again in August while inventory climbed to 1.62 million homes, its highest level since November 2019.

That combination can make it look like the shortage is disappearing. It isn’t that simple.

More homes sitting on the market at a given moment is not the same thing as having enough homes overall. Higher rates can slow demand and push inventory higher without solving the underlying supply problem.

And people still move. Families grow. Jobs change. Divorces happen. People retire. Life does not stop because mortgage rates hit 7%. But high prices and high borrowing costs make those moves harder, and today’s market reflects that. Pending home sales in August were 4.7% below a year earlier.

Another familiar part of the story is the tension between state housing reforms and local implementation.

California recently took legal action against five local governments over noncompliance with the state’s housing element law. Massachusetts went further earlier this year, suing nine communities that had not complied with its MBTA Communities Law.

In Montana, the state Supreme Court unanimously upheld three of the state’s housing reforms after they were challenged in court. Pacific Legal Foundation participated in the case on behalf of property owners seeking to build housing under the new laws.

Texas is seeing its own version of the same fight. After the state required certain large cities to allow multifamily housing in commercial areas, some North Texas cities responded with new height requirements, design standards, and amenity mandates. The Texas Tribune reported that Irving now requires certain apartment projects to include amenities such as a gym, dog park, and remote-work space, while Grand Prairie adopted a swimming pool requirement.

State law can change the rules. That does not mean every local government will embrace them.

The Different

The housing market itself feels different this time.

When the rate shock hit in 2022, the change was sudden. Mortgage rates roughly doubled over the course of the year, sales dropped, and the phrase “housing recession” became part of the conversation. NAR itself used that language in describing the slowdown.

Four years later, high borrowing costs are no longer a new phenomenon.

Builders have spent much of this period using incentives, particularly mortgage-rate buydowns, to keep buyers in the market. Those tools bought time, but there is a limit to how far incentives can stretch purchasing power. NAHB reported this summer that many builders were still offering incentives, including rate buydowns, even as new-home sales weakened.

The tone around the existing market is also noticeably different. NAR described August’s decline in sales as a “mild dip” tied to higher mortgage rates, while noting that buyers were still entering contracts. That is a long way from some of the rhetoric surrounding the 2022 rate shock.

Buyers may be dealing with many of the same affordability pressures they faced several years ago, but the shock factor is gone. High prices, limited purchasing power, and elevated mortgage rates have been part of the market for years now.

The policy environment has changed, too.

Congress enacted the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act in July after the legislation advanced with overwhelming bipartisan support. The law includes provisions aimed at regulatory reform, housing production, financing, and incentives for state and local governments to allow more housing.

But passage was the beginning, not the end.

Several of the law’s most consequential supply-side provisions still require HUD rulemaking or new programs to be established, and many depend on future congressional appropriations.So, for now, there is still a fair amount of waiting to see what implementation actually looks like.

The politics surrounding housing have changed as well.

Four years ago, housing advocates were trying to push affordability and housing supply further into the political conversation. Today, voters are doing some of that pushing themselves.

A national survey this spring found that 79% of registered voters considered housing costs an extremely or very important issue. Another survey this summer found housing costs tied with health care as the most important issue among voters ages 18 to 34.

That attention is showing up on ballots, too.

California voters will consider Proposition 45 this November, which would establish new timelines and procedures for environmental review and litigation involving many housing and infrastructure projects. Massachusetts voters will decide Question 7, which would allow single-family homes on qualifying lots of at least 5,000 square feet in residentially zoned areas with public sewer and water.

Both measures come after years of state-level debate over the role local regulations play in housing production.

A New Course

So, yes, parts of 2026 feel a lot like 2022.

Mortgage rates are high. Buyers are struggling with affordability. Sales are slowing. Builders are pulling back. And debates over housing supply continue to play out between states and local governments.

But the policy landscape is not where it was four years ago.

Congress has now enacted a major bipartisan housing law. More states have moved on land-use and housing reforms. Courts are beginning to resolve legal challenges to those reforms. Voters in several states are being asked to weigh in directly. And housing costs have become a much more prominent issue for the electorate.

The fundamentals of the housing market have not changed enough.

The politics surrounding them have.