President Donald Trump said his administration’s goal is to keep housing prices high, arguing that falling home values would unfairly benefit people who “didn’t work very hard.” The comments appeared to clash with his recent promises to make housing more affordable. It highlights a tension between protecting existing homeowners and helping first-time buyers enter the market.
Donald Trump talks about housing prices in Cabinet meeting
During the Cabinet meeting on January 29, Donald Trump made clear that protecting existing homeowners remains his priority. “People that own their homes, we’re gonna keep them wealthy. We’re gonna keep those prices up,” he said. He added that lowering home values would “destroy the value of their homes” for the benefit of others.
Trump later said his administration would still aim to make buying a house easier by reducing interest rates, but not by lowering prices. “We’re gonna make it easier to buy, we’re gonna get interest rates down,” he said, before stressing that homeowners who feel financially secure should not lose that sense of wealth.
He reiterated the point again later in the meeting. “I don’t wanna drive housing prices down, I wanna drive housing prices up for people that own their homes,” President Trump said, assuring homeowners that rising values would continue (via People).
The remarks stood in contrast to Trump’s recent statements on affordability. On January 7, he wrote on Truth Social that buying a home had become out of reach for many Americans and blamed inflation for weakening the American Dream.
In that post, Trump said he was taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, quipping, “People live in homes, not corporations.” The following day, he explicitly promised lower costs, announcing plans to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds to reduce mortgage rates and monthly payments. He described the move as part of his effort to “restore Affordability.”
