President Donald Trump is proposing a two-pronged federal push on housing: a massive $200 billion government purchase of mortgage bonds to lower mortgage rates and a crackdown on Wall Street ownership of single-family homes.
“I am instructing my Representatives to BUY $200 BILLION DOLLARS IN MORTGAGE BONDS. This will drive Mortgage Rates DOWN, monthly payments DOWN, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
After Trump’s announcement, promising on Truth Social to seek a ban on large institutional investors purchasing additional single-family homes, Senator Mark Kelly replied, “I agree. Making sure housing is affordable for young people is important and I’m glad to hear you’re interested. Good news is we saved you the work and introduced this last year. Let’s get it done.”
Introduced in February 2025, Humans Over Private Equity (HOPE) for Homeownership Act, aimed at curbing hedge funds in the single-family market. The lawmakers say hedge funds and other institutional investors now own hundreds of thousands of single-family rentals and could control as much as 40% of that market by 2030. In 2022, institutional investors owned approximately 700,000 single-family homes (about 5% of the 14 million single-family rentals). Some local markets have much higher concentrations: Atlanta (25%), Jacksonville (21%), Charlotte (18%).
Their bill would impose a tax equal to 15% of the sale price, or at least $10,000, on hedge funds that buy additional single-family homes and would strip tax benefits such as depreciation and mortgage interest deductions. It would also levy a $5,000-per-home annual penalty if funds fail to sell off their existing single-family portfolios over 10 years.
The proposal has support from progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and advocacy groups such as Americans for Financial Reform, who say it would level the playing field for households competing against cash-rich investors.
Housing advocates say it may take a mix of bond-market moves, new taxes, and limits on big investors to get prices under control, while industry groups argue that sweeping crackdowns could shrink the rental supply and unsettle capital markets. The bill itself is still in its early stages and has not moved past its initial committee referral as of early 2026.
Trump plans to outline more details on housing and affordability, including the proposed investor ban, in an upcoming address at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He has blamed “record high inflation” and corporate buying for putting the American Dream of homeownership out of reach for many families and says he will urge Congress to write the restrictions into law.
Inflation did reach 9.1% in June 2022, coming off a recovering economy from the pandemic. From 2021-2024, average inflation was approximately 5%, and fell to 2.9% before Biden left office in January 2025.
Trump also said this week that he wants the federal government to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds, arguing the effort will drive mortgage rates and monthly payments down and make homeownership more affordable. He has pointed to the balance sheets of mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying their cash reserves give Washington room to step in without privatizing or selling off the entities.
Despite controlling trillions of dollars in mortgage assets, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lack the financial cushion to deploy $200 billion in bond purchases without jeopardizing their stability. Some financial analysts caution that pulling $200 billion out for mortgage bond buying could run afoul of capital rules and put strain on the key institutions that support the country’s roughly $9 trillion mortgage market.
White House aides describe the idea as part of a broader response to voter frustration over high borrowing costs heading into this year’s midterm elections, though the administration has not released a formal implementation plan. Economists say heavy bond buying can help nudge mortgage rates down, but some analysts argue that a single $200 billion push might only shave rates slightly while leaving the federal government more exposed if the housing market sours.
Many housing economists, regardless of politics, say the affordability crunch is rooted less in Wall Street ownership and more in a basic lack of homes for sale. They estimate the U.S. is short roughly 4.5 to 4.7 million homes, a gap blamed on decades of underbuilding that worsened after the 2008 financial crisis.
The mismatch between housing supply and demand has become acute: in 2022 alone, 1.8 million new families formed while builders constructed only 1.4 million homes, leaving the nation increasingly behind. At current construction rates, it would take builders seven and a half years just to catch up with existing demand. Experts attribute the shortfall primarily to restrictive zoning laws, land-use regulations that limit development, and chronic underinvestment in new construction.
