This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partners at Maryland Matters. Read the story at Maryland Matters.
New data from a Maryland real estate lobbying group reports that Maryland housing inventory and new listings have declined over the last year, despite state efforts to reduce Maryland’s nearly 100,000 housing unit shortage.
Maryland Realtors announced Tuesday that active housing inventory fell 16.4% over the past year, from 18,402 houses available in May 2025 to 15,395 available in May 2026. New listings are also down, from 9,368 new listings in May 2025 to 7,296 new listings in May 2026, a 22.1% decline over the year.
Costs are rising at the same time. In May, the average sales price for a house in Maryland went from $522,664 last year to $547,405, a 4.7% increase.
For Lisa May, director of advocacy and public policy with Maryland Realtors, the recent data shows that Maryland continues to struggle with providing the housing options that meet the demand.
“Supply and demand applies to housing,” May said. “It’s actually more subject to the laws of supply and demand because if you have excess housing, you can’t just pick it up and move it somewhere else in the country, like you do shoes or cars. What we’re seeing in Maryland is we’re not building new homes.”
She said people are not moving because they don’t see a better option in the market, another factor that keeps supply low and prices high. The states where costs are improving, she said, “are the ones that are building.”
“Housing supply has been a tough one to crack,” she said. “We know that Maryland is a highly-regulated state … and that creates a lot of risk for developers when they are looking to invest in Maryland and build the housing that our residents need.”
She said part of the solution is to “reform the rules that allow different types of housing to be constructed.” But renter advocates warned that trying to bring housing costs down by removing regulations could threaten renter protections like rent stabilization in Montgomery County, which developers have said impede new housing projects.
“We have to look at the larger perspective,” said Matt Losak, executive director for the Montgomery County Renters Alliance. “We have a competing self-interested narrative put forward by landlord developers, real estate lobbies that are trying to eliminate any regulation on their industries … in order to maximize profits.
“It’s up to our governments to balance public interest with our interest in economic development,” he said. “When they’re talking about a housing shortage … they’re not talking about 35,000 people milling around downtown Silver Spring who don’t have a home. What they’re talking about is market demand. That is, if we had the houses, we could sell them or rent them, which is a very different reality.”
From a national perspective, the housing market is still tough, but Realtor.com reports that listing prices fell for the seventh straight month, a year-over-year decrease of 2.4%, showing a “promising run” in the housing market.
Maryland’s stalled housing supply comes in spite of efforts by Gov. Wes Moore (D) to push new legislation that facilitates new housing developments in the state.
In 2024, he pushed for a legislative package that included a measure to provide “density bonuses” that allow developers to build more units than zoning rules typically allow in exchange for a certain percentage of affordable housing options.
This year, the General Assembly approved two of his housing bills meant to encourage developers to build in Maryland.
One measure, the Housing Certainty Act, delays payment of certain fees to county officials for new housing development and creates “vesting rights” for developers: The assurance that a project would be subject to the local regulations in place at time of its completed application and not subject to later changes.
Vesting rights have long been a complaint from developers, who say that changes in regulation and local ordinances can prolong the approval and development of new housing options. But that legislation doesn’t take effect until October.
The other new law encourages new housing development around transit-oriented locations by restricting parking minimums and other local decisions in specific situations.
Realtors and multifamily housing developers were not ready to pass judgment on whether Moore’s housing policies have been effective.
“It’s too soon to know exactly — if you ask me in a year or two, we might have a better sense,” said Aaron Greenfield, director of government affairs for the Maryland Multi-Housing Association. “I applaud the governor and the administration in trying to employ all of the tools in the toolbox … but these things take time.”
May noted that a Moore bill that stalled this session, the Silver and Starter Homes Act, could have been another step toward increasing the housing supply.
The bill would have encouraged the development of smaller homes by prohibiting local jurisdictions from placing restrictions on how small a lot or house could be, allowing younger families to step into homeownership and giving aging Marylanders a chance to downsize their homes.
The bill faced opposition from local and county government representatives, who said it overstepped local zoning authority with blanket statewide mandates. The legislation had hearings in House and Senate committees but was never brought up for a vote in either chamber.
May argues that current regulations and market pressures mean it’s easier to build big homes, and developers are not able to easily develop smaller houses due to lot-size minimums and other factors.
“The General Assembly has been in a tough place between what … the administration has proposed and what views the local governments, county governments, municipal governments have been — in terms of holding on to their local control and their local power,” May said.
“And I think that’s why we’ve seen mixed results of what has actually passed the General Assembly in terms of actionable legislation on housing,” she said. “Seeing the Starter and Silver Homes bill — the sort of vitriol that came out of that hearing, and for that bill to not even get a vote, I think was very disappointing.”
She hopes lawmakers take it up again next session. But any statewide housing policy could still create conflict with the local zoning authority.
“Last year’s debate around promoting smaller ‘starter and silver’ housing unleashed multiple concerns from numerous communities, but focusing that conversation on affordability, rather than simply spatial footprint, might unlock a more fruitful discussion,” Michael Sanderson, executive director for Maryland Association of Counties, said in a written statement Wednesday.
“County leaders remain open to innovations in financing, infrastructure support, and agency alignment — any of which might help accelerate a catch-up in Maryland housing stock,” he said.
