John Law (9:36)
Alright, first up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left is skeptical of Trump's proposals, arguing they misidentify the root of the issue. Some say that housing affordability can only be addressed by increasing supply. Others suggest Trump should work with Congress to pass meaningful reforms. In the New York Times, Benjamin Appelbaum wrote, the landlords are not the problem. President Trump relishes a handy scapegoat, and on Wednesday he picked one to blame for the nation's housing crisis. Investors that are buying large numbers of single family homes and operating them as rental properties. Appelbaum said the crisis is a simple problem with a complicated solution. The problem is that the United States does not have enough housing. The hard part is building more. It is certainly easier and perhaps better politics to talk about barring investors or imposing rent controls or kicking immigrants out of the country. But none of that is going to do the trick. A ban might have some benefits. Less competition from investors could push sellers to accept lower prices. Buyers might be more likely to reside in the houses rather than renting out the properties, appelbaum wrote. But it would punish renters. The rise of institutional investment in single family homes is best understood as a post crisis replacement for subprime mortgage lending. Tighter credit standards mean that millions of Americans can no longer obtain loans to purchase homes. Institutional landlords allow people to live in the same places but as renters. In cnn, Allison Morrow suggested that Trump has the wrong guy in casting blame for housing prices. Real estate has been a lucrative institutional investment since the collapse of the housing market in 2008. The finance industry swooped into desirable neighborhoods to buy up. Suddenly cheap housing stock and start collecting rent on those properties. But the large investors amount to a tiny portion of the overall market, Morrow said. The vast majority of real estate investment purchases come from so called mom and pop landlords, people who own one or two additional homes that they rent out to supplement their income. Trump's other housing pitch would involve the federal government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, buying up a boatload of mortgage backed securities, something the Fed has traditionally done in times of turmoil to keep interest rates from spiking, Morrow wrote. Certainly many economists have said ramping up purchases of mortgage bonds would help bring mortgage rates down, offering to homebuyers. But once again, doing so does nothing to increase the housing supply and it probably won't spur people to sell the homes they live in now and look for something else. In the Los Angeles Times, Fred P. Hochberg proposed a concrete step to cut housing costs. At the Small Business Administration, where I once served as the deputy and acting administrator, a little known initiative called the Home Disaster Loan Program has been in operation since the 1960s, providing long term home loans at a low fixed interest rate for people whose homes or businesses have been damaged by natural disasters, hochberg said. Those loans have served as a lifeline for Americans experiencing disasters, and versions of this program have been expanded during broader moments of crisis, including the early days of the COVID 19 pandemic. Americans today are in a crisis of affordability, so why not expand the program to reach them by lowering the financial barrier to home ownership for many, it could help take the pressure off the housing market in much the same way America did a century ago with the advent of the 30 year mortgage, a simple innovation that helped lift homeownership from under half of American families to nearly two thirds, hochberg wrote. The president's recent openness to cracking down on the high home prices, an issue long popular with Democrats, suggests that there may be a political opening for Congress and the White House to get something done. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right support Trump's proposals, but say they are only a first step. Some view the attack on institutional investors as misguided. Others propose additional measures to complement Trump's plan. In the Daily Signal, Peter st. Ange and E.J. antony welcomed Trump's solution to the housing crisis. Banning institutional buyers will lower prices, but not by much, considering they make up just a couple percent of home purchases. So going by price elasticities might get a 3 to 5% drop in home prices, possibly closer to 10%. In Sunbelt cities, where institutions are most active, St. Ange and Antoni said buyers need a lot more. Since he took office in January 2025, Trump's been trying everything. He tried to cut closing costs, promoted simplified local building codes, removed tariffs on construction materials and proposed opening federal land to housing. What's missing is the two biggest drivers of housing inflation, which is driven by federal deficits and mass deregulation in home building, environmental mandates, zoning and rent control. The national association of Homebuilders estimates could add $94,000 to the cost of a home for these. Trump needs Congress, St. Ange and Antony said. Given Congress won't meaningfully cut inflationary spending or regulation in areas like healthcare and insurance, housing costs are the last man standing. Trump's doing what he can, but Congress has to do the heavy lifting. In City Journal, Brad Hargreaves offered a defense of institutional home ownership. The image of a family bidding against Blackstone or Cerberus for a starter home strikes many people as fundamentally un American, and few politicians from either party will want to be seen as pro Blackstone in an election year, hargreaves said. But going after institutional owners is the wrong way to pursue the goal of boosting homeownership. Though less than 1% of all U.S. single family homes, a tiny slice of the housing market are institutionally owned, single family homes provide meaningful benefits, particularly to families seeking access to high quality public schools. While mom and pop landlords may be more sympathetic, protecting them from market competition should not be a public policy objective. Unlike small investors, institutions invest on behalf of pension funds, endowments, insurance companies and public retirement systems, hargreaves wrote. Small landlords, by contrast, invest on their own behalf. The tax code provides numerous advantages to long term real estate ownership, from like kind exchanges to stepped up bases. There is no compelling public interest in using state power to protect these investors from competition. In Breitbart, Representative Pat Harrigan, the Republican from North Carolina, wrote, when Wall street becomes your landlord, families lose. Housing has become unaffordable and Wall street buying up neighborhoods is making it worse. Congress needs to back him up with legislation that sticks, harrigan said. That's why I introduced the family's first Housing act with Congressman Josh Reilly, the Democrat from New York. The bill targets properties controlled by federal entities like fha, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and usda. When these federally backed homes go on the market, families get an exclusive 180 day window to buy them. During that period, only families purchasing a primary residence, non profits local governments and community land trusts can buy. The bill also requires properties to be priced at fair market value based on independent appraisals, mandates quarterly public reporting on all sales, and imposes real penalties on federal employees who try to bypass those protections, harrigan wrote. The bill is a critical first step, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. We also need more housing supply, zoning reform and broader restrictions on institutional ownership. When the same corporations that manage your 401 are bidding against the house you're trying to buy, something is fundamentally wrong. Alright, let's head over to Ari for his.
