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John Law
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Isaac Saul
From executive producer Isaac Saul. This is Tangle.
Ari Weitzman
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of our take. I'm your host for today Tango's managing editor, Ari Weitzman, and our topic is going to be President Trump's proposals to address housing affordability. There's a lot going on in the news, I think we all know that. But this is an issue that has been pervasive throughout the past couple years spanning several different administrations. And I was really eager to get my take in today. Not only are we covering President Trump's proposals, but I've got one of my own and curious to hear which of the two you think is better if either or both find out. But before we get started today, I'm going to send it over to my good friend John to kick us off.
John Law
Thanks, Ari, and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, the United States withdrew some personnel from bases in the Middle east following comments from a senior Iranian official that the country would target U.S. bases in the region in retaliation for any airstrikes. President Donald Trump said that he believes the Iranian regime has stopped killing protesters, but he is monitoring the situation as he weighs potential strikes. Separately, Middle east envoy Steve Witkoff said that the Israel Hamas ceasefire in Gaza is moving to its second phase, which will involve disarming Hamas, beginning the rebuilding of the Strip, and establishing a transitional Palestinian administration. Number two, A federal officer shot a man in the leg during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Federal officials said the shooting victim was a Venezuelan national who fled arrest and attacked the officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle. Number three Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote to defeat a war powers resolution in the Senate that would have blocked President Trump from using military force within or against Venezuela. Senators Josh Hawley and Todd Young voted to defeat the measure after previously supporting it. The senators said they received assurances from the Trump administration that US Troops would not deploy to the country. Number four the State Department announced that it will indefinitely pause immigrant visa processing for 75 countries beginning January 21st and will also stop issuing visas to people from those countries looking to immigrate to the US Permanently. At number five, the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Washington Post reporter Hannah Nattanson's home in search of alleged information seizing a phone, two laptop computers and a Garmin watch. The Justice Department says the search was part of an investigation into a defense contractor charged with unlawful retention of national defense information.
Isaac Saul
The White House has unveiled a plan to make housing buying a house more affordable Last week, President Trump revealed two policies. One is to ban large investors from buying single family homes. According to the US Government Accountability Office, this practice from investors can cause rents and home prices to increase for consumers. Another is for the federal government to purchase $200 billion in mortgage bonds in an effort to drive down mortgage rates.
John Law
Last week, President Donald Trump announced a pair of actions to address rising homeownership costs. On January 8, the President directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac government sponsored mortgage finance companies to buy $200 billion in MOR bonds to bring down mortgage rates. On January 7, Trump said he was taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single family homes and would ask Congress to codify those rules. The president said he will share more details about his housing affordability plans in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week. For context, the Federal National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation are companion organizations created by Congress to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the mortgage market. The organizations buy mortgages from lenders to enable banks to continue offering loans to new home buyers. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hold these mortgages or package them into securities that investors can buy. After the 2008-2009 housing crash and financial crisis, the government limited the amount of mortgage backed securities the organizations could hold to $225 billion each. As of November 2025, they held a combined $247 billion. In announcing the order to buy $200 billion in bonds, President Trump blamed the Biden administration for rising homeownership costs and said the bond purchases would drive mortgage rates down, monthly payments down, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable. The US 30 year fixed rate mortgage average is 6.6% as of January 8th, more than double the rate in January 2021. Many private equity companies such as Blackstone entered the single family home market in the wake of the 2008-2009 housing crisis and remain active buyers and sellers in the market. Some economists and lawmakers have argued that these purchases have crowded out individual homebuyers and increased housing costs. In 2023, Brookings estimated that these large institutional investors owned approximately 3% of single family rental stock in the U.S. though that share was significantly higher in certain markets. President Trump did not share further details about how he would implement his ban on new large institutional investor purchases of single family homes, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said that these firms were would not be forced to sell their current holdings. Federal Housing Finance Agency director and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Chairman Bill Pult praised the plan, saying people should live in homes they shouldn't be on corporate balance sheets. Today, we'll offer perspectives from the left and the right on the President's housing plans, and then Managing Editor Ari Weitzman will give his.
Ari Weitzman
Foreign.
Isaac Saul
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John Law
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.
Ari Weitzman
All right, that's it for what the left and the right are saying. Which brings us to my take. After a crescendo of concerning maneuvers from the White House over the past couple weeks, I got to experience what it's like when President Trump gives me a taste of something that I'm personally hungry for. Banning institutional investors from owning homes. Yeah, hell yeah. I know how hard it is to get your foot in the door to homeownership today, and I also know how easy it is for the rich to get richer. So this sounds like two birds with one stone. When Trump announced this plan before we even decided to cover it, I volunteered to write the take on this issue. Trump picked one of the problems I care about the most, and he chose a villain I'd like to see antagonized. So jumped into this, and I got about a minute or two to ride the high of that feeling before going through the tango process, learning more about this plan and finding that the pattern with Trump remains the pattern with Trump. He's picked a real problem, but he's chosen a terrible tool for solving it, one that grabs headlines, but it leaves the root problem unsolved. And it also seems to have been motivated by a personal suggestion from someone in his circle, this time, Vice President J.D. vance. So as I started to learn about this issue more, the first name that I pull when I look at anything regarding housing is Jerusalem Dempsis. She's been all over the housing beat for years, loved her writing in the Atlantic, and now that she's with the independent organization the Argument, I checked out what she had to say over there. Dempsis notes that institutional investors only make up a small share of owners of single family homes. According to her, she says it's roughly 0.65% and that they provide a market need managing properties for rent to low income tenants. Ultimately, Dempses argues that banning this class of investors from owning single family homes wouldn't meaningfully impact Housing affordability and the impact from such a rule would likely send prices actually in the wrong direction. Demsa cites a white paper that found that removing institutional investors from accessing the market would also remove their rental properties from the market, causing prices to increase by 2.4%. Now, Trump's proposal wouldn't force those investors to sell or force them to be out of the market entirely. It would only prevent new purchases. But this marginal and opposing effect indicates that this kind of prohibition on who can buy homes wouldn't help the national housing affordability problem. As Dempsa states bluntly, it's impossible to solve the problem that young people, low income people, and people without great credit can't access home ownership by going after institutional investors. You have to actually build more housing, reform credit standards and push up wages. Dempsis, an abundance liberal, is not alone. In her opinion in the Free Press, conservative economist Judge Glock also said that institutional investors only make up a small share of owners of single family homes and serve a market need. Glock argues the alternative to corporate purchases often wasn't a locally owned house. It was a decaying husk filled with rats and cobwebs. Institutional investors helped protect both the housing they purchased and the neighborhoods where that housing was located. As ready as I was to enthusiastically line up my support for Trump's policy, those counterarguments are just far too convincing. Yes, housing affordability is an enormous problem in our country. Personally, I'd rank it among our top problems. Housing comprises a full third of median household spending, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And just to couch that with some context, in the 1970s, anything over 25% was a red flag. We're talking about 33% today. This economic strain causes a host of cascading issues. It tightens families budget, making sensitivities to inflation and interest rates higher. It forces people to live in areas farther from their workplaces, raising transportation costs for individuals and for governments. It prevents many people in my generation and in subsequent ones from building wealth. It is one of the main causes, if not the main cause, of homelessness. It degrades public health. It slows economic growth. The list truly does go on, however. And again, Trump's proposal doesn't solve this problem. I'm more persuaded by proposals from people on the left like Dempsys, that the solution is more housing and easier entryways into home ownership. And the solutions for people on the right like Locke, that the industry needs more investors and less regulation. Ultimately, I think the solution to this problem has to be all of the above and more. In addition to co signing the ideas from Dempsus and Glock, I have my own idea, and it's one that my good friend Tangles Executive editor Isaac Saul I think is going to hate. We should increase the tax burden on owning second homes off the top. I don't want to create a false impression of this idea, so I want to start with two important clarifiers. First, the primary target of such a policy would not be people like Isaac who rent their primary residences and own homes in parts of the country where squeezing people out of a short supply of desirable housing is not a problem. In Isaac's case, he rents in Philadelphia and he owns a home in rural West Texas. Rather, it would be very wealthy people who already own and live in a primary residence, but also own vacation properties that are often vacant in areas with housing shortages, like the Lake Champlain shoreline near where I live in northwest Vermont. Second, this would not be a federal policy. Local governments collect property taxes. So I'm calling for a set of local policies, maybe with some facilitation from the federal government to help share consumer data across state lines to help prevent fraud. So how high should the tax rate on second homes go? Well, England passed a law recently that will allow town and village councils the ability to increase tax rates for second homes in their municipalities by up to 100%. That might be too high here in the US and it would certainly be too high in most places. But local governments can make that determination for themselves. The goal is simple. Don't make owning first homes harder. Make vacant homes less common. The theory is simple, too. One family can't live in two residences simultaneously, so one of these residences will always be vacant, a problem that compounds for third homes and fourth homes and so on. If owning that second property becomes more costly, then we encourage one of two behaviors more local ownership of those properties or more owners of second homes, renting them out to recoup their costs. Either way, the vacancy gets limited. We're already pulling some levers to try to accomplish a similar goal at the federal level, with caps on deductions from mortgage interest and tax exemptions capped for secondary residences. But we can increase the local tax rate, too. Not only would that increase housing availability, it would also provide revenue that could fund local services like schools, streets and infrastructure, or be used to offset taxes imposed on primary residents, bringing the rate down for the median taxpayer. I know that lobbying for more government intervention and higher taxes is not very popular, and for good reason. In most cases, I do not want the government to have more control or for citizens to pay more in taxes. However, aggressive and considerate tax policy is sometimes the best tool for the job and I think this is one of those times. Again, tax policy won't solve housing affordability on its own. I think my idea would help more than Trump's, but housing is too big an issue for any one silver bullet solution. This broad problem requires an equally broad all of the above fix more housing, less regulation, and smarter tax policy.
Isaac Saul
We'll be right back after this quick break.
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Isaac Saul
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Ari Weitzman
Okay, I think Isaac has a disagreement with me, so passing the mic over to him to hear what he's got to say.
Isaac Saul
Hey guys, Isaac here with another staff dissent today. So Ari is right. I disagree strongly with his proposal to increase property taxes on second homes. Not because I own two homes I don't, but because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. For starters, not all secondary housing is vacant. Most of it is used seasonally, recreationally, or is already being rented. Even if local jurisdictions could all coordinate a tax increase like this, imagine what such a proposal might do to the economy in, say, beach towns across the States, United Eastern Seaboard. Second, if you're going to propose increasing taxes, you have to show me that local jurisdictions will use that money effectively. In October of 2023, the median amount paid in real estate taxes had risen 51.9% from 2012 to 2021 after adjusting for inflation. Ari says this money can go toward local services, but is that what the boon in this real estate revenue has gone to? Third and finally is that second homes make up about 4% of the US housing stock, roughly equal to the top end share of housing Dems says institutional owners have accounted for in recent history, a share she also dismisses as being not very meaningful to combat affordability. Given those numbers, I have a hard time believing that Ari's idea is a better solution than stopping deep pocketed institutional investors from outbidding and overtaking housing supply from regular Americans.
Ari Weitzman
Thanks Isaac. I think you're wrong, but thank you all the same. That brings us to today's reader question, which comes from Robert in East Norton, Pennsylvania, who asks how can the US Charge Maduro, a non US Citizen, with crimes in the US and seemingly retroactively use that to justify his capture? Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, in his substack Executive Functions, lays out the legal theory that the Trump administration could argue justifies this action. First, the administration could reference precedent from an argument advanced by then Assistant Attorney General Bill Barr in 1989 to justify the arrest of Manuel Noriega, the military dictator who ruled Panama in the 1980s. That argument rests on the FBI's statutory authority to issue arrests outside the US claiming the statute exceeds the authority of international law. Then the logic to justify the use of force in executing Maduro's capture and extradition becomes convoluted but also potentially legally defensible. Under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the US can explain the use of force as a necessary form of preemptive self defense for the agents performing the arrest action. Goldsmith isn't saying that argument is definitively sound. He's just saying that it's possible to make. Here's what he says. Quote this is where the logic of the executive branch precedent leads. As law professor Rebecca Ingber has explained, unit self defense could justify the United States using force against non state actors who do not even have the capacity to threaten US Territory in a state that has not attacked the United States, providing the groundwork for a future escalation with either the non state actor or the state itself, and all without authorization from Congress. End quote. That may sound convoluted, but Goldsmith argues that it is still feasible. Also, at this point, it's all still theoretical when Maduro's trial begins. We'll see how the Southern District of New York advances its argument in practice, and then we can provide you an update at that time. All right, that's it for our reader question today. I'm going to send it back over to John to help finish the podcast and I'll talk to you all again soon. Have a good day.
John Law
Thanks, Ari. Here's your under the radar story for today folks. The Trump administration is reportedly nearing a deal to lower tariffs on Taiwan in return for new investment in U S based semiconductor chip manufacturing by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. This agreement is said to lower tariffs on Taiwanese imports from 20% to 15% in line with current duties on Japan and South Korea. While TSMC would commit to building at least four more chip manufacturing plants in Arizona, the company has already pledged to build six factories and two advanced packaging facilities in the state. The Office of Trade Negotiations in Taipei said that US And Taiwan had reached broad consensus in trade negotiations, but did not offer a timeline for finalizing the deal. Bloomberg has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Folks, just wanted to give you a reminder that today we released a new YouTube video. If you've flown commercially in the past decade, you've probably noticed an uptick in irritants like delays, cancellations, shrinking seats, and broadly, a system that seems built to exhaust customers rather than help them. In this YouTube video, we break down the source of these problems, why they're so persistent, and why recent efforts to solve them have failed. It's one of our most in depth investigations yet, so head over to our YouTube channel to check it out. There's a link in today's episode description. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. When Michael Welch was a medical student, he met a seven year old patient suffering from cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder with a short life expectancy. She inspired Welsh to dedicate his life to studying the disease and his research paved the way for a new CF treatment. Now, for the first time, CF patients life expectancy approaches general population levels. Welch Welch won the 2025 Lasker Debacky Clinical Medical Research Award for his discoveries. People with CF are now getting married, having children, and living lives they could not have imagined a decade ago, welch said. Seeing that transformation has been incredibly moving. The AMA has this story, including an interview with Welch, and you can check that out with a link in today's episode description alright everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com where you can sign for up up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. Issac, Ari and Camille will be here tomorrow with the suspension of the Rules podcast and I will return on Tuesday. For Isaac, Ari and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have an absolutely fantastic weekend, y'. All. Peace.
Isaac Saul
Our Executive Editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive Producer is John Lowell. Today's episode of was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsey Knuth and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@retangle.com.
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Host: Isaac Saul (with Ari Weitzman and John Law)
Date: January 15, 2026
This episode of Tangle dives deep into President Trump’s new proposals aimed at addressing housing affordability — an issue that has spanned multiple administrations and grown in urgency. The episode explores Trump’s plans to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes and direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to lower mortgage rates. True to the podcast's nonpartisan approach, the hosts present arguments from both the left and the right, then offer their own takes and suggested solutions.
“The White House has unveiled a plan to make buying a house more affordable… President Trump revealed two policies. One is to ban large investors from buying single family homes… Another is for the federal government to purchase $200 billion in mortgage bonds in an effort to drive down mortgage rates.” — Isaac Saul (04:45)
“When Wall Street becomes your landlord, families lose. Housing has become unaffordable and Wall Street buying up neighborhoods is making it worse.” — Rep. Pat Harrigan (17:05)
“Banning institutional investors from owning homes. Yeah, hell yeah. … So this sounds like two birds with one stone.” (17:18)
"If owning that second property becomes more costly, then we encourage one of two behaviors: more local ownership… or more owners of second homes renting them out to recoup their costs." — Ari Weitzman (22:53)
“Second homes make up about 4% of the US housing stock … I have a hard time believing that Ari's idea is a better solution than stopping deep-pocketed institutional investors from outbidding and overtaking housing supply from regular Americans.” — Isaac Saul (28:19)
This episode thoughtfully dissects the U.S. housing crisis, offering listeners diverse perspectives and new policy ideas—with candid, intellectual disagreement that typifies Tangle’s approach to the news.