President Donald Trump is moving to harness the power of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a bid to slash mortgage costs and revive homeownership for middle-class Americans squeezed by years of inflation and soaring interest rates.
According to Breitbart, President Trump announced that he is directing his representatives to deploy the mortgage giants to purchase a massive tranche of home-loan debt as part of a broader affordability push.
In a post on Truth Social, he declared, 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. It is one of my many steps in restoring Affordability, something that the Biden Administration absolutely destroyed. We are bringing back the AMERICAN DREAM that was destroyed by the last Administration. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
The 47th president emphasized that his earlier decision in office not to privatize or sell off Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac left the entities in a position to accumulate roughly $200 billion in resources. That financial cushion, he suggested, is now being turned toward ordinary Americans rather than Wall Street or Washington bureaucrats.
Trump sharpened his criticism of his successors record, arguing that the current housing crisis is a direct result of misplaced priorities in the Biden White House. He wrote, Biden ignored the Housing Market, and instead was immersed with High Crime, Open Borders, runaway INFLATION, the Afghanistan Disaster, and a Military that he left in Chaos and Confusion. Everything was broken, but I, as President of the United States, have already fixed it!
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both government-sponsored enterprises, were rescued by taxpayers during the 2008 financial meltdown and have remained under tight federal oversight ever since. Following Trumps announcement, mortgage-backed securities outperformed U.S. Treasuries, and shares of mortgage-focused firms such as Rocket Mortgage and LoanDepot climbed, signaling market confidence in the move.
Financial analysts say the strategy is a direct, market-based way to push borrowing costs lower without expanding heavy-handed regulation or new federal entitlement programs. If the Trump administration allows Fannie and Freddie to grow their retained portfolios, theres no question it will have downward pressure on mortgage rates probably at least a quarter of a point, maybe more, said David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference.
Citigroup has similarly estimated that if the two GSEs were to expand their portfolios by $250 billion, premiums on their mortgage bonds would likely fall by about 0.25 percent. That shift, in turn, would be expected to translate into a comparable reduction in mortgage rates for homeowners, easing monthly payments for families trying to buy or keep a home.
Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), underscored that the plan is both feasible and imminent under Trumps leadership. He said the move can be executed very quickly. We have the capability, we have the cash to do it, and we are going to go about executing it very smartly and in a very big way.
Pulte added that the bond-buying initiative will be paired with a crackdown on large financial players that have been crowding families out of the housing market. He said the policy would serve as a one-two punch, noting that the Trump administration is moving to ban institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes, while the President prepares to outline further details of his affordability agenda at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later in January.
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