WASHINGTON — Days before Americans vote in the 2026 midterm elections, a new national survey finds that housing has become a defining frustration of the campaign season, but not one that most voters expect the election itself to solve. Nearly three-quarters of Americans say the country is in the middle of a housing crisis, and almost two-thirds say they have little faith that the outcome of the midterms will make the housing market any better. The findings, published on October 30, 2026, from a September survey of 1,000 Americans by Clever Real Estate, capture a striking gap between how much voters care about housing costs and how little they trust politics to fix them.
The survey lands at a moment when the cost of a home, whether bought or rented, is weighing on household budgets across the country. High home prices and elevated mortgage rates have left the housing market largely frozen, with many would-be buyers sitting on the sidelines and many current owners reluctant to sell and give up lower rates they locked in years ago. Against that backdrop, 70 percent of respondents said housing is a bigger issue in this election than it was in 2024, and 78 percent said they want the next Congress to make housing affordability a priority. Yet only a minority believe either party, once in charge, will actually deliver improvement.
That scepticism cuts across party lines, even if its intensity differs. When respondents were asked what would happen to affordability if Republicans keep control of Congress, 49 percent said it would get worse and just 21 percent said it would get better, with about 30 percent expecting no change. If Democrats gain control, 31 percent expected affordability to worsen and 37 percent expected it to improve, with about 32 percent expecting no change. In other words, even the more optimistic scenario leaves a majority of Americans expecting things to stay the same or get worse, a sobering verdict on the political system’s ability to move a market shaped by interest rates, supply shortages, local zoning rules and years of underbuilding.
What the Housing Crisis Survey Reveals About Voter Confidence
The headline numbers tell only part of the story. Beneath them sits a portrait of voters who are angry, financially squeezed and unsure where the candidates standing for their own seats even stand on the issue. About 63 percent of respondents said they feel angry about housing costs, a figure that rises to 78 percent among people who do not own a home. Among Americans who plan to vote, 85 percent said housing affordability is at least somewhat important in choosing candidates, and 31 percent called it extremely important. Yet 64 percent said they do not know their congressional candidates’ positions on housing at all, including 57 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans surveyed.
The sense that Washington is part of the problem, rather than the solution, runs through the results. Some 58 percent of respondents said current government policies are making housing affordability worse, while only 9 percent said those policies are making it better. More than a third, 36 percent, said neither party has a clear plan to improve the economy. Independents were the most sceptical of all, with 55 percent saying neither party has a clear economic plan, compared with 29 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of Republicans. About 31 percent said their support for the party they most align with has decreased over the past year.
Blame, in the survey, falls most heavily on the current administration. Two-thirds of respondents, 67 percent, said President Donald Trump’s policies have made the housing market worse, including 33 percent of Republicans and 92 percent of Democrats. A similar share, 68 percent, said those policies have made the economy worse. Nearly half of all respondents, 48 percent, named the Trump administration as the primary cause of the affordability crisis, followed by corporate and institutional investors at 37 percent, mortgage lenders and banks at 33 percent, home builders and developers at 33 percent, and the Biden administration at 23 percent. The partisan split on blame was sharp: 71 percent of Democrats blamed the Trump administration, against 17 percent of Republicans, while 45 percent of Republicans blamed the Biden administration, against 6 percent of Democrats.
For many respondents, the housing squeeze is not abstract. More than half of Americans surveyed, 58 percent, said they could not afford to buy a home today, including 47 percent of people who already own one and 86 percent of non-homeowners. Nearly one in three, 31 percent, said they struggle to afford their current housing payments, including 53 percent of non-homeowners and 22 percent of homeowners. Six in ten said housing costs have kept them from reaching financial goals such as saving for emergencies, cited by 29 percent, or saving for retirement, cited by 25 percent. And 54 percent said they feel financially worse off than they did two years ago.
The everyday costs surrounding a home add to the pressure. Nearly all respondents said they were concerned about rising property taxes, at 90 percent, and homeowners insurance costs, at 88 percent. Three-quarters were concerned about rising mortgage rates, and 70 percent were concerned about rent prices, including 91 percent of non-homeowners. Broader cost-of-living worries sat even higher: 95 percent were concerned about inflation and about the cost of food and groceries, 94 percent about health care costs and 93 percent about the cost of gasoline. Inflation and the cost of living remained the top voting issue overall, cited by 77 percent of those who plan to vote, ahead of health care at 63 percent and energy and gas prices at 60 percent.
One of the survey’s most revealing findings is how open voters say they are to breaking with their own party over housing. About 41 percent said they would consider crossing party lines to vote for a candidate with a strong housing plan, including 38 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of Republicans. That willingness rises sharply among people feeling the squeeze directly: 51 percent of those who struggle to afford their housing payments said they would consider crossing party lines, compared with 36 percent of those who do not struggle. Among Republicans who struggle with housing payments, 54 percent said they would consider it, against 27 percent of Republicans who do not struggle. For candidates in close races, that is a signal that a credible housing message could reach voters who might otherwise be out of reach.
The Housing Law Most Voters Have Never Heard Of
Perhaps the most striking gap in the survey is between what Congress has already done and what voters know about it. In July 2026, a major bipartisan housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, became law without the president’s signature after passing the Senate by 85 votes to 5 and the House by 358 votes to 32. The law will bar large institutional investors controlling 350 or more single-family homes from buying additional single-family homes starting on January 7, 2027, with some exceptions. It is a policy most Americans already support: about 61 percent said they want large corporations restricted from buying homes, including 65 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of Republicans.
Yet 71 percent of respondents said they were not aware the bill had become law, and 70 percent of those who support restricting large corporate buyers did not know it was already law. The finding points to a communications failure as much as a policy one. A law designed to answer one of voters’ most popular demands has gone largely unnoticed in the months before an election in which housing is a top concern. It also helps explain why so many voters say they do not know where their candidates stand: the debate over housing policy, where it exists at all, has not reached them in clear terms.
The survey also showed that voters are more likely to see Congress and state governments as part of the solution than as the cause of the crisis. About 47 percent said state governments can improve housing affordability, while 28 percent blamed them for the crisis, and 45 percent said Congress can improve affordability, while 31 percent blamed it. Corporate and institutional investors were viewed the other way around, with 37 percent blaming them and only 22 percent seeing them as able to improve affordability. On local building, opinion split by homeownership: 47 percent of non-homeowners said they support new apartment buildings in their community, compared with just 25 percent of homeowners, a divide that helps explain why new supply is so hard to approve in many neighbourhoods.
When asked what would improve affordability in their own area, respondents pointed first to the costs they feel most directly. Reducing property taxes was the most popular policy, chosen by 60 percent, followed by reducing home insurance costs at 53 percent and lowering mortgage rates at 53 percent. Those answers underline a difficult truth for the next Congress: the levers voters want pulled most urgently, including mortgage rates, are heavily influenced by the Federal Reserve and financial markets rather than by legislation alone, while the supply-side changes that economists often recommend, such as zoning reform and faster permitting, take years to show up in prices.
The survey’s authors polled 1,000 Americans on September 3, 2026, about the housing market, the economy and the midterms. As with any survey of this size, the results describe the views of those who took part rather than a precise prediction of the election result, and attitudes may have shifted in the weeks since the fieldwork. What the numbers do show, with unusual clarity, is a mood: voters are worried about housing, they want the next Congress to treat it as a priority, and they are deeply unsure that voting alone will change what their home costs them each month.
That mood matters beyond the housing market itself. Housing costs shape where people live, whether they can save, when they start families and how secure they feel about the future. A Congress that arrives in January with a mandate to act on affordability will face an electorate that is watching closely but not yet convinced. The survey suggests the first task for the winners may not be passing another bill, but persuading voters that Washington’s housing promises, including the law already on the books, are real, understood and capable of reaching their monthly budgets. Readers following the policy debate can also catch up on the Senate housing supply bill advancing with zoning incentives and federal land for new homes and the White House housing order targeting mortgage insurance and refinance costs.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Real Estate News, Clever Real Estate and Mortgage Professional.