While regulating land resources and real estate development, the regulatory measures in China’s housing market also have far-reaching impacts on foreign trade by influencing labor agglomeration, labor costs, and capital allocation. Understanding the intrinsic linkage mechanism of housing policy on trade activities is the key to formulating efficient economic policies. Based on the housing market and export trade data of 30 provinces in China from 1999 to 2024, this paper constructs a multiple regression model consisting of six variables, including housing supply regulation and volumetric rate regulation, to analyze their impact on China’s foreign trade development index (FTDI). OLS and R-LS methods are used to estimate the model, while regional heterogeneity analysis and cointegration test are conducted. The results show that in the coastal region, for every 1 percentage point increase in housing supply regulation, the FTDI increases by about 0.4 percentage points, and the coefficient of volumetric regulation is 0.633, which is significant and good. Labor force size shows a negative effect with a coefficient of – 0.701, indicating that restricted population density inhibits trade expansion. In addition, investment transfer and credit crowding out effects also show significant positive effects on trade. It is concluded that the housing market has a significant boost to exports, especially in coastal cities, and that policy regulation should take into account regional differences and long-term structural linkages.