Zillow put out a piece last week that lined up almost exactly with what I see every day on the ground across Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, and southern Lehigh County. Their conclusion: the affordability crisis isn't really about commissions, interest rates, or any one villain. It's about supply. The country is short roughly 4.7 million homes, and until we build our way out, prices stay stretched.
That tracks with what I'm watching here locally. The buyers I'm working with right now are well-qualified, financially careful, and ready to move — and they still can't find inventory that fits. Most weeks there are more pre-approved buyers than there are homes for them to tour. That's not a financing problem. That's a math problem.
Zillow points to a few specific culprits, and I'd add some local color to each:
— We stopped building enough single-family homes after 2008 and never fully restarted. That's nationally true and absolutely true here in southeastern PA. Drive through Doylestown, Newtown, Blue Bell, West Chester, or Coopersburg and try to find a brand-new infill home built in the last decade. You'll find a handful — almost all of them ours or our competitors'. The cupboard is bare.
— Zoning makes new supply harder than it should be. In every township I work in across the five-county region — Central Bucks, Hatfield, Upper Saucon — getting a small infill development approved is a year-plus of meetings, neighbor letters, traffic studies, and re-drawings. Most builders won't do it. That's why our communities at Avondale Walk, Enclave at Fortuna, and New Britain Place are as small as they are — the townships only have appetite for a handful at a time.
— Existing homeowners are locked into low mortgage rates and aren't moving. National story, same locally. The empty-nesters in Bucks and Chester County who'd normally downsize to a townhome at 65 are staying put at a 2.875% rate. That means the move-up buyer pool I'd normally have isn't selling their starter home — which means first-time buyers in Delaware County or southern Lehigh have nothing to buy.
— Builders are building bigger and more expensive because that's where the margin is. Also true. Construction inputs are up. Labor is up. Land is up. To make the deal pencil, builders push square footage and finish levels. That leaves the missing middle — the $450K to $650K townhome and small detached home — chronically undersupplied.
Here's what I'm trying to do about it, in my small corner of the world.
Every project we take on is sized and priced for the missing middle, not the trophy buyer. Avondale Walk, Enclave at Fortuna, and New Britain Place are deliberately built at the price point where most working professionals across Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, and southern Lehigh County actually live. Townhomes, smaller detached homes, end units that feel like single-family. That's not where the biggest builder margin sits — it's where the deepest demand sits.
I aggressively look at infill lots. Quiet 2- to 20-acre parcels in townships people actually want to live in. Half the parcels I look at can't be developed for one reason or another, and I walk. The ones that work get pushed through entitlement and built. We've done it five times now across the region and we'll keep doing it as long as there's land to acquire.
I work directly with sellers — landowners specifically — so we can keep deal costs low and pass that into the price of the finished home. If you own raw land, an infill lot, or assemblage potential anywhere from Doylestown down through West Chester and Media up to Center Valley and Coopersburg, please reach out. Me or my clients move fast, do our own diligence, pay cash or close-to-it, and you don't pay a commission to sell to us directly.
None of this fixes the national shortage. But house by house, lot by lot, community by community, it's how a developer like me chips away at the problem on the ground. Five counties, one buildable parcel at a time.
If you want to talk about a piece of land, a build, or a buy, I'm a text or email away. 215-740-2856 / will@williameagles.com.
Source: Zillow Research, June 2026 — "The 4.7 million home shortage: why the affordability crisis is, at its core, a supply story."