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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January was fueled by his promise to lower inflation and solve the housing affordability crisis that has been gripping the country since the pandemic.
But through 2025, what Trump has been doing is mostly floating ideas on how to do that—not passing concrete actions to improve affordability or boosting inventory. His administration, in the meantime, has passed measures to restrict access to federal housing programs for undocumented migrants living in the country, and cut funding to nonprofits.
At Newsweek, we have gone through all the suggestions the Trump administration has made this year and the actions it has taken—as well as the White House’s claims to what it has achieved so far.
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What Trump Has Done This Year Impacting Housing
On day one of his second mandate, January 20, Trump passed an executive order tackling inflation and housing relief.
In the memorandum issued, the White House stated that "hardworking families" in the country were "overwhelmed" by the cost of housing, among others. In light of this crisis, the president officially ordered the heads of all executive departments and agencies "to deliver emergency price relief, consistent with applicable law, to the American people and increase the prosperity of the American worker."
This included pursuing "appropriate actions" to lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply; eliminate unnecessary administrative expenses and rent-seeking practices that increase health care costs; and eliminate counterproductive requirements that raise the costs of home appliances, according to the memorandum.
But while Trump vowed to boost housing inventory in the country, other policies pushed forward by his administration have undermined this same objective.
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The Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown has threatened to exacerbate the current labor shortage within the construction industry, where one in four workers are immigrants, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
Heavy tariffs on the U.S. trading partners—especially Canada and Mexico—have also threatened to raise the price of construction material used in homebuilding, such as timber. In an executive order issued in March, Trump ordered the immediate expansion of U.S. timber production—but industry insiders and experts warned that ramping up manufacturing would take time.
Other ways that Trump influenced the housing market this year include pushing for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. While the central bank’s chair Jerome Powell long resisted Trump’s pressure and attacks against him, refusing to lower rates as he did not think the time was right, the Fed’s board agreed to cut rates three times by the end of the year.
While the Fed does not decide mortgage rates, it has an indirect impact on them. Mortgage rates have fallen slightly over the past few months, and the national average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is now around 6.18 percent, according to Freddie Mac.
Trump appointee Scott Turner and Bill Punte, who respectively lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), have also taken far-reaching actions this year.
In February, HUD announced it was planning to cut 50 percent of its workforce, or about 9,600 employees, as part of a DOGE purge to "eliminate waste, fraud and abuse and ultimately better serve the American people," Turner said.
In the same month, the department repealed a Biden-era fair housing proposed rule aimed at cracking down on housing discrimination. More specifically, the law required localities to track and address patterns of segregation in their communities in order to receive federal funds.
"Terminating this rule restores trust in local communities and property owners, while protecting America’s suburbs and neighborhood integrity," Turner said, though Democrats and housing advocates strongly opposed the move.
HUD also moved this year to stop undocumented migrants from using federal housing programs and canceled roughly $30 million in federal grants for nonprofit fair housing organizations. A Massachusetts judge ordered the department to release the grants in March, but not all have been yet issued, the New York Times reported.
Pulte, at the head of the FHFA, also cut staff early in the year, including 100 Fannie Mae employees reportedly dismissed over "unethical conduct" in April.
What Trump Has Promised To Do—or Suggested
The president has floated many ideas this year to solve the ongoing housing affordability crisis.
He has suggested opening up federal land for residential housing construction, cutting red tape around it and accelerating development in the areas, including by rolling back environmental rules.
He floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage, before retreating after the suggestion generated backlash among industry insiders and experts.
He called on mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to boost homebuilding, though it is not clear how the two enterprises could incentivize construction across the country at a time when developers are facing dwindling demand and are being forced to slash prices.
He also talked of privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been under government conservatorship since the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008.
And in September, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Reuters that Trump may declare a housing emergency next year, as housing costs have reached the level of an "all-hands-on-deck" challenge.
What He Is Claiming Credit For
The White House issued a statement in early December mentioning the "progress on lowering cost" delivered by Trump this year, "with much more relief on the way."
In a paragraph dedicated to housing costs, the White House said that "housing affordability is finally trending in the right direction."
But it only takes credit for lower mortgage rates. "At the beginning of December, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.19 percent—12 percent lower than when President Trump took office in January," the White House wrote.
"According to the Consumer Price Index, shelter inflation is at a four-year low, and the national median rent has fallen for four straight months."
Mortgage rates are expected to continue declining in 2026, even if modestly, experts said.
But Powell said this month that lower borrowing costs won’t fix the housing affordability crisis alone. "Many people have very, very low-rate mortgages from the pandemic period, and they kept refinancing and caught the really lowest, so it’s maybe expensive for them to move," he said.
"We haven’t built enough housing in the country for a long time, and so a lot of estimates suggest that we just need more housing of different kinds," he added.
Trump also recently said he finds himself facing a dilemma. Speaking at the Oval Office on December 18, the president admitted that he wants to lower housing costs for "young people out there and other people to buy housing."
At the same time, he wants to keep homeowners "wealthy and happy" and prevent home values from falling significantly.
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