On Wednesday, President Donald Trump spoke for about 70 minutes at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. His comments before global and business leaders were wide-ranging, touching on immigration policy, the war in Ukraine and his belief that the U.S. should be given Greenland.
However, his remarks did not provide many details on housing, despite an earlier Truth Social post promising to unveil more information at the forum. Instead, Trump largely restated his previous online comments.
“Housing affordability played a less central role in President Trump’s Davos speech than many expected,” said Jake Krimmel, senior economist with Realtor.com, in a written statement. “Still, the president used the forum to outline a handful of housing-related ideas and to frame what he sees as the key headwinds facing the market.”
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What Trump Said About Housing at the WEF
In his speech at the WEF, Trump started his housing comments by blaming high interest rates for making homeownership unaffordable for many people.
“Today, I am taking back this bedrock of the American dream,” the president said, later adding: “America will not become a nation of renters.”
To make housing more accessible, Trump reiterated his plan to ban large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes. He first announced this proposal on social media platform Truth Social earlier in the month.
Trump blamed corporate purchases for driving up housing prices. He also argued that large investors have an advantage over families in that they can write off property depreciation as a business expense. “That’s something we’re going to have to think about too,” he said.
The president also pointed to high credit card interest rates as one reason families struggle to save money for down payments. To address this concern, the president is asking Congress to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for one year. Last week, White House official Kevin Hassett told Fox Business that Trump would announce a plan to allow people to dip into their 401(k) retirement savings for cash to use as a down payment. However, this was not mentioned during the Davos speech.
Referencing another proposal announced on social media, Trump stated that he would direct “government-backed institutions to purchase up to $200 billion in mortgage bonds to bring down interest rates.”
In wrapping up his comments on housing, the president added a caveat on affordability.
“I am very protective of people that already own a house,” Trump said. “These people have become wealthy … because of their house. Every time you make it more and more and more affordable for somebody to buy a house cheaply, you’re actually hurting the value of those houses.”
However, Krimmel notes that this view is counter to research showing that building new homes boosts economic growth and doesn’t reduce the value of existing homes.
“President Trump’s speech is dangerous for the housing market, and his use of verbal threats is alarming,” said Armstead Jones, strategic real estate advisor at Baltimore-based Real Estate Bees, in an email. “Institutional investors should be limited in the amount of single-family homes they purchase, but the government should not make comments that can cause the private market to lose traction.”
[Read: Best Mortgage Refinance Lenders.]
Executive Order on Institutional Housing Investors
The day prior to his WEF speech, Trump issued an executive order entitled, “Stopping Wall Street from Competing with Main Street Homebuyers.”
It requires the secretary of Treasury to define “large institutional investor” and “single-family home” within the next 30 days.
Within 60 days, several departments are required to restrict the use of federal programs that could help large institutional investors acquire single-family homes. These include the following:
— Preventing government-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from facilitating the purchase of a home by a large institutional investor when the property could otherwise be purchased by an owner-occupant
— Prohibiting the disposal of federal assets in a way that transfers single-family homes to large institutional investors
“This means institutional investors can still buy homes and don’t have to sell the ones they own, but they’d be restricted from receiving government incentives,” said Jeff Taylor, managing director for Mphasis Digital Risk, in an email.
Other provisions of the order require the attorney general and the chair of the Federal Trade Commission to review any large acquisitions of single-family homes by large institutional investors. It also directs departments to promote sales to individual owner-occupants.
Trump has called on Congress to pass legislation to codify the provisions of the order.
[See: When Will Mortgage Rates Go Down? See the 2026 Forecast]
Will Trump Make Housing More Affordable?
Some real estate experts are skeptical of the proposal’s impact on housing affordability.
“(T)he impact may be muted once details are finalized because investors owning 100 or more single-family homes only own around 1% of America’s single-family homes,” Taylor said.
What’s more, investment firm Blackstone reports home purchases by large institutions dropped 90% from 2022 to 2024. With sales already slowing, banning institutional buyers may have a negligible effect on housing affordability.
“A large share of institutional purchases are all-cash or financed outside the agency mortgage system, meaning they could fall outside the reach of this order,” Krimmel said. “As a result, while the policy may be politically resonant, it is unlikely on its own to significantly boost inventory or improve affordability for most buyers.”
The purchase of mortgage bonds by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is expected to lower mortgage rates, but industry observers say the reduction will be modest and temporary. After Trump’s initial announcement, mortgage rates dropped to just below 6% but have since rebounded.
“Rising 10-year Treasury yields tied to heightened geopolitical risk, particularly surrounding the Greenland negotiations, have likely offset much of the impact,” Krimmel said.
Some experts, including Jones, believe long-term affordability can only be achieved by increasing housing supply. For example, a 3-to-1 policy in which institutional investors must produce one affordable home for sale for every three single-family homes they purchase as rental units.
Another way to increase housing supply may be to make it easier for developers to build homes at higher densities than are traditionally allowed.
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Trump’s Davos Speech Offers Few Details on Housing Affordability Policy originally appeared on usnews.com
