The end of a burdensome housing policy, the launch of a deed theft prevention agency, and Alaskan homeowners carrying more mortgage debt. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are the Hits and Misses for the week of April 27-May 1.
Hit: Good Intentions, Bad Idea. This week, the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Agriculture (USDA) rescinded a Biden-era policy that would make all new home construction ineligible for an FHA or USDA-backed mortgage loans unless the property was built according to the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). The departments said that enforcing the 2021 IECC as a mandatory nationwide standard would have added between $20,000 and $31,000 to new home construction, thus driving up housing prices and preventing many first-time homebuyers from purchasing properties. The extra expense would have also complicated the construction process, with longer permitting and inspection timelines. In fairness, the policy had the best of intentions in striving to achieve an improved state of energy efficiency. But it was poorly drafted and recklessly forced on a housing industry that repeatedly argued the costs far outweighed the benefits. Mercifully, this onerous example of government overreach has been pushed back.
Hit and Miss: Good Idea, Uncertain Execution. Also this week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani launched the new Office of Deed Theft Prevention. Mamdani said the state received more than 500 complaints of deed theft within the city last year, hence the need for a new agency to deal with this growing issue. This noble effort could get a Hit, considering that deed theft is on the rise and few governments at either a city, county or state level are seriously addressing the matter. But it could also get a Miss because the new agency seems to be more reactive than proactive – we’ve not heard anything about planning for new strategies or tools designed to create guardrails to stop the crime before it takes root. And we have to wonder why we need another layer of bureaucracy when there are already government agencies that are supposed to be addressing this issue.
Hit and Miss: Welcome Back, But What Happened? There was good news out of Maryland this week as the state’s Real Property Search system came back online after a two-week shutdown following suspicious activity on state servers. An early analysis determined that the only affected systems contained publicly available information that was already accessible through the Real Property Search tool, so no confidential data was pilfered. The return of the system is a Hit, of course, but the Miss comes because the state didn’t bother to provide details on who could have been responsible for the breach or why existing cybersecurity methods failed to stop it. If a system like this is offline for two weeks, shouldn’t there be a detailed explanation over what went wrong?
Miss: An Unwelcome Accomplishment. Alaska doesn’t get cited very often in our news coverage, and it is hard to imagine anyone in the state will appreciate this item. According to a new WalletHub study, Alaska is the state that added the most mortgage debt from the third quarter to fourth quarter of 2025 – at least in percentage terms, with the average balance rising by 2.52% to $248,013. Alaska residents make average monthly mortgage payments of $2,078, and they also have to deal with relatively high property tax rates. In comparison, 19 states saw their mortgage debt decrease during the fourth quarter of 2025.
Miss: A Severe Housing Shortage. A new report released by AARP Hawaii has determined that the Aloha State needs to create 60,000 additional housing units by 2050 if it wants to meet the double dilemma of aging population lacking adequate housing and younger residents who cannot afford to live there. The report estimated that 44,000 of the new units will be needed for residents ages 65 and older, while the lack of affordable housing has forced residents aged 20 to 30 to move from Hawaii at extraordinary rates – the state has the third worst retention rate for that demographic, coming in behind Alaska and Wyoming. Keali‘i Lopez, state director of AARP Hawaii, observed, “The question becomes not only where our children and grandchildren will live, but who will care for our aging parents and grandparents if families can no longer afford to stay.”
In Memoriam: James Berkowitz. This week, we learned of the passing of Jeff Berkowitz at the age of 78. Berkowitz was an attorney who switched careers into real estate to become the founder and chairman of Berkowitz Development Group in Coconut Grove, Florida. Within the Miami-Dade County market, his company developed more than 2 million square feet of retail, office, and industrial space including the Dadeland Station Shopping Center, Aventura Commons and Kendall Village Center. Outside of real estate, he was the founding executive director of Dade County’s Civilian Review Board and Ombudsman Office, and he founded and chaired both the Children’s Foundation of Greater Miami and the Miami Children’s Museum. Berkowitz represented the best of the industry and he will be greatly missed.
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
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