Jeff Ostrowski

President Donald Trump offered two new proposals this week aimed at the stubbornly complex issue of home affordability.

Trump on Wednesday said he would move to ban institutional buyers from the housing market. Then on Thursday, he proposed a mortgage bond program aimed at lowering mortgage rates.

Will either achieve their targets? Experts are skeptical. Two previous proposals from the Trump administration — opening federal lands to housing development and introducing 50-year mortgages — mostly brought shrugs and, so far, have yet to yield results.

Mortgage rates finally may fall below 6% in 2026. A couple caveats: Lower mortgage rates usually follow bad economic news.

For years, Americans have heard this mantra: There isn’t enough housing in the United States. The ongoing shortage explains why affordability is such a challenge, and why so many Americans are spending their 30s as renters rather than homeowners.

As the housing market cools, a new narrative is emerging. Home prices now are falling in half of the nation’s 20 largest metro areas, according to the most recent Case-Shiller housing index. Builders are so desperate to sell new homes in Texas and Florida that they’re subsidizing mortgage rates as low as 0.99%.

Fast-fashion mogul Amancio Ortega built his fortune by selling bargain-priced shirts, jeans and dresses. Now, the Spanish billionaire is paying a premium for some of the Miami area’s most prominent properties.

His latest big-ticket deal came this fall. Ortega’s family office, Pontegadea, paid $274.4 million in October for the 1111 Brickell tower in Miami.

As they struggle to persuade Americans to buy new homes, homebuilders have leaned hard on a new tactic: Builders’ mortgage arms are wooing consumers with cut-rate home loans.
The average mortgage rate for new construction buyers was 5.27% during the third quarter of 2025, compared to 6.26% for buyers of existing homes, Realtor.com reported today.

More grim news: Age of first-time homebuyers hits another all-time high
Jeff Ostrowski
Follow
6 min read
·
Just now
Listen
Share
Press enter or click to view image in full size
Photo by Jeff Ostrowski
The median age of first-time homebuyers has risen to 40 — the highest it has ever been, according to new data from the National Association of Realtors.
It’s not as though first-time homebuyers needed any more bad news, but that’s what they got with this dreary statistic, which tops last year’s ...

After a pandemic-era surge of money and people, South Florida’s real estate market is taking a bit of a breather, according to real estate executives who spoke Thursday at Commercial Observer’s South Florida Development & Capital Leadership Forum.

In one example, Gil Dezer, president of Dezer Development, said units at his newest luxury condo tower are moving, if a bit sluggishly. But closings have at least been brisk enough that Dezer said he’s about to close on a $630 million construction loan.

Buying a home is an exhilarating and exhausting process, one that tests the wits and resolve of even experienced buyers. And some of the very people you turn to for guidance might not always have your best interests in mind.

Some of the industry’s sales tactics can make it unnecessarily difficult for you to shop around, or to claim down payment assistance packages designed to encourage homeownership.

Home prices remain near record highs. Mortgage rates have retreated but remain well above their pandemic lows. Add it up, and homebuyers are feeling discouraged.

With housing affordability squeezing buyers, one in six (16 percent) of aspiring homebuyers have given up on purchasing a home in the past five years because they could not find anything they liked or could afford, according to a new Bankrate survey. Nearly 3 in 10 aspiring homeowners said the biggest deterrent was home prices.

Friday’s tepid jobs report means mortgage rates might finally be poised to fall. The U.S. economy created few jobs in August, the Labor Department reported, news that could set the stage for both a rate cut by the Federal Reserve and a downturn in mortgage rates.

“Mortgage rates dropped to new 2025 lows today after a weaker-than expected August jobs report pushed the 10-year Treasury yield — the key benchmark for mortgage pricing — to its lowest level since April,” says Rocket's Bill Banfield.

The pandemic ushered in one of the most unbalanced housing markets in recent memory: Sellers called all the shots, and buyers made all the concessions. Now, for the first time in years, homebuyers have regained some leverage — and, in some places, especially formerly hot markets like Texas and Florida, they even have the upper hand.

“There’s still far more homes for sale than there are buyers,” says Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “This summer is a buyer’s market."

Mortgage rates are at their lowest levels of the year, with the average cost of a 30-year mortgage retreating to 6.63 percent as of Aug. 6, according to Bankrate’s national survey of lenders.

Yet, today’s rates still feel high, especially for the many Americans who long for the days of sub-4 percent mortgages. If you’re hoping to score the best possible rate right now, here are some possibilities.

U.S. home prices have been on a roll. Defying the downward pull of an affordability squeeze and elevated mortgage rates, home values keep setting records. In fact, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) just reported 24 consecutive months of year-over-year price increases.

When might this momentum finally reach its limits? Not any time soon, apparently: The median price of existing-home sales rose to $435,300 in June, an all-time record, according to NAR.

Five years beyond the pandemic housing boom, American homeowners appear to be increasingly cautious about re-entering the housing market, according to Bankrate’s 2025 Mortgage Rates Sentiment Survey.

The survey found that about half (51 percent) of U.S. homeowners say they would be uncomfortable with purchasing another home no matter what happens with mortgage rates this year, up 13 percentage points from Bankrate’s 2024 survey.

For decades, mortgage lenders have used a single credit score — the FICO score — to underwrite applications for home loans. But that’s about to change.

Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, announced July 8 that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will begin using a second credit score from a competing company that takes more financial factors into account. “Credit history will no longer just include credit cards and loans,” Pulte wrote on X. “This is HUGE.”