Dillman has watched this play out on both the single-family and apartment side. "I worked with a home builder and you could build all day at $800,000, but the market was something like $500,000," he says. With these production difficulties, Dillman estimates that the US is undersupplied by 1.3 million housing units.

"Part of the reason builders have had challenges delivering supply in scale, is because of the distortions imposed on prices by monetary and fiscal policy earlier in the cycle and in the name of recovery," he says.

Dillman says that during and after the recession, policymakers spent several years doing everything they could to inflate home prices. "Then people stepped back and somehow it was a shock that underemployed millennials couldn't afford to buy homes that had skyrocketed in price," Dillman says. "Fortunately, a renaissance in multifamily has provided much needed housing."

High construction costs have helped curtail multifamily starts recently, but Dillman thinks both single-family and apartment builders have seen the worst of the construction price increases.

"I really don't think that this stuff [trade policy and construction cost increases] is as big of an issue as it has been in the past," Dillman says. "If anything, it has actually gone back a bit and has contributed to falling construction material costs, at least on the single-family side.

Labor cost increases have slowed a little bit, but will be a greater concern than materials. "I think 2018 was the year of materials cost being an issue," Dillman says. "I wouldn't be surprised if 2020 is the year where we will be talking more about labor costs. Whichever cost is higher is the one that people tend to focus on."