Weekly Real Estate News
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has signed two executive orders aimed at attacking the state’s housing shortage from two directions: expanding lower-cost construction methods and cutting delays in permitting, licensing and certification.
The orders signed Oct. 1 create a housing innovation initiative centered in the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development and a separate effort to streamline state approval processes that can hold up development.
Maryland is putting modular housing into its supply strategy
The Housing Innovation order creates a Maryland Housing Innovation Incubator and an advisory council charged with researching and testing housing policies and recommending legislative, regulatory and budget actions.
It also creates a Governor’s Initiative to Accelerate Modular Housing Construction. The state plans to modernize regulations, develop statewide pre-approved building plans and provide technical assistance to local governments to expand modular production and adoption.
A Modular Workforce Partnership will develop training programs and outreach strategies, including opportunities tied to Maryland Corps, Service Year participants and high-school apprenticeships.
The order expands the mandate of the Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Council as well, connecting the state’s housing-production push with efforts to put vacant properties back into productive use.
The second front is permitting
Moore’s administration is also targeting the approvals that determine how quickly projects can move from plans to construction. The permitting order directs state agencies to identify and address bottlenecks in permitting, licensing and certification and is intended to improve coordination across agencies.
The orders build on Maryland’s 2025 Housing Starts Here initiative, which directed housing, transportation, environmental and general-services agencies to improve the use of state-owned land and reduce state permitting timelines.
The significance for builders will depend on implementation. An executive order can reorganize state processes and direct agencies, but local land-use authority, project economics, infrastructure capacity and construction costs remain important constraints on housing production.
Modular construction also is not a universal solution. Its potential advantage is repeatable factory production and shorter on-site construction schedules, but transportation, financing, local codes and project scale can affect whether those savings materialize.
Maryland’s approach is nevertheless notable because it combines regulatory streamlining with an explicit effort to make alternative construction methods easier to deploy. Rather than treating the housing shortage only as a zoning or subsidy problem, the state is attempting to change both how homes are approved and how some of them are built.
