Pulte: 50-Year Mortgages No Longer Trump Priority

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Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte suggested Friday that the Trump administration may no longer be considering 50-year mortgages as a cost-saving measure for homebuyers.

"I think we have other priorities," Pulte told reporters when asked if the White House was still weighing the proposal.

His comments follow President Donald Trump's call earlier this week to bar "large institutional investors from buying" up single-family homes.

"For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. "It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans."

"It is for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it," he continued. "People live in homes, not corporations."

The president added that he will be discussing the topic, as well as additional "Housing and Affordability proposals" at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, at the end of the month.

Institutional investors, including hedge funds and private equity firms, have been blamed for limiting the housing supply and driving up costs for homebuyers and renters by purchasing properties in bulk, but, according to the American Enterprise Institute, these investors only owned approximately 1% of the U.S. single-family housing stock as of June 2025.

Pulte said Friday that Trump's expected executive action would not include any "forced sale" of homes owned by institutional investors.

Instead, he said, the administration is looking at ways to stop large institutions from buying up newly built homes — a practice he argued is pricing Americans out of homeownership and shifting houses onto corporate balance sheets.

The proposal, Pulte said, is just one of "30 to 50 different ideas" under consideration.

"I feel very confident that he'll announce a couple of very good ideas in Davos, and then we'll see from there what he wants to do," he said.

Pulte's comments also reflect a shift from his earlier support for 50-year mortgages. Last November, he praised the idea as a "game changer" after Trump posted an image of himself alongside former President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Truth Social.

Roosevelt's administration helped introduce the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage during the Great Depression — a model that later became the industry standard — to expand access to homeownership.

Nicole Weatherholtz

Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.

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