President Donald Trump reiterated his aim of making the housing market affordable without lowering home values during the State of the Union speech, his annual address to Congress.
Trump’s speech Tuesday night took aim at economic issues as the president moves to reassure voters he has curtailed rising costs that he campaigned to fix.
Low interest rates will help reduce the “Biden-created” housing affordability crunch, Trump said, while protecting the high home values of those “who feel rich for the first time in their lives”.
“We want to keep those values up, we’re going to do both,” Trump said.
Trump said mortgage rates are “falling fast and payments are down almost $5,000 since I took office”. The average mortgage rate was 7.04% in January 2025, when Trump took office, compared to 6.01% now, according to Freddie Mac.
What did Trump say about the institutional investors ban?
Trump’s solution to the housing crisis includes a range of proposals to make it more attainable. He has signed an executive order to discourage institutional investors from buying up single-family homes. He’s also pushed to lower interest rates and directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase an additional $200 billion in mortgage bonds to lower mortgage rates.
In the speech, Trump asked Congress to pass legislation to make the ban permanent. That investor ban hasn’t yet appeared in the bipartisan housing package, the Housing for the 21st Century Act, that’s now in the Senate.
Trump added that a woman in the public gallery had lost 20 bids on homes to investors, who had then turned those homes into rentals and were “stealing her American dream”.
“Now I’m asking Congress to make that ban permanent because homes are for people, really. That’s what we want, not homes for corporations,” he said.
A majority of Americans still believe that homeownership is “essential to the American dream, according to a poll by the National Association of Realtors®. But, less than 1 in 5 voters think now is a good time to buy a new home.
Trump also indicated that there was momentum in the new construction industry. “We have created 75,000 new construction jobs in a very short period of time, and they’re getting bigger and stronger. Nobody can believe what they’re watching,” he said.
Trump delivers economic message aimed at costs
The speech also comes days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down most of the sweeping tariffs Trump has made a center of his foreign and economic policy. Those have had a major impact on a wide range of building materials.
Trump said he was not deterred by the “very unfortunate ruling.” He said the tariffs would “remain in place under fully approved and tested alternate legal statuses.” These tariffs, Trump said he hoped, would replace income tax.
After Trump’s address, the Associated Builders and Contractors President and CEO Michael Bellaman said in a statement that the organization “appreciates the president’s continued focus on the economy, expanding opportunity for American workers and addressing affordability”.
He added that the construction industry employs more than 8.3 million people and contributes more than $2 trillion annually to the economy.
“While resilient, the construction industry faces ongoing headwinds from high costs, tariff uncertainty and a chronic workforce shortage,” Bellaman said in his statement.
“As these concerns mount, the president should note that this industry is key to achieving his promises to lower the cost of housing, infrastructure and energy for American families. ABC urges the president to create the conditions for contractors to thrive with pro-growth policies so that he can deliver on his affordability promise for the American people.”
In his State of the Union address, Trump also announced a “ratepayer protection pledge” that would require data center developers to provide their own power. Trump also said it would mean data center developers could build power plants on their sites. Trump said this would offset home energy costs.
In the Democratic rebuttal to Trump’s address, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger said Democrats were “working to lower costs”, but did not expand on the affordability issues Americans are currently grappling with.
However, Senate Democrats have unveiled several housing bills of their own aimed at cutting tax breaks and increasing home construction.
