President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at bringing down the cost of buying and owning a home, directing federal housing agencies to pursue a handful of measures touching mortgage insurance, refinancing costs and manufactured housing. The move comes as Freddie Mac’s average 30-year fixed mortgage rate stands at 7.32% that week, after reaching 7.40% the prior week, and affordability remains a persistent squeeze on buyers across the country.
What the Order Actually Does
According to Bloomberg, Trump signed the order Thursday with the stated goal of bringing down housing costs nationwide. The order, titled “Decreasing Housing Costs for the American People,” directs the Federal Housing Finance Agency to build a pilot program that would proactively cancel mortgage insurance premiums for borrowers who meet certain equity requirements tied to current property values, according to HousingWire. That cancellation program would apply only to future mortgages, Bloomberg reports, meaning it could eventually save money for new borrowers whose homes appreciate enough to meet the equity threshold, but it would not retroactively help people who already have mortgage insurance locked in.
The FHFA regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled companies that back more than half of the nation's residential mortgage market, per Bloomberg's report. The order also directs FHFA to expand its existing title-insurance waiver pilot into a permanent program, a move the agency says is intended to reduce refinancing costs, the outlet's report states. Separately, the order establishes a task force focused on improving the quality of manufactured housing while lowering its cost, and it directs the secretaries of the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Veterans Affairs to reduce interest rates on certain single-family home loans issued by those departments, the same HousingWire report notes.
A Signing Date That Took a Beat to Confirm
Coverage of the order came in two waves. An earlier HousingWire piece described a draft that had not yet been signed, while a later report from the same outlet confirmed Trump signed the order on Thursday, directing federal housing agencies to pursue the mortgage and homeownership measures. That earlier draft reporting had outlined the same broad categories that ultimately appeared in the signed order: mortgage-insurance cancellation, refinance closing costs, manufactured-housing innovation, and USDA and VA loan rates, the outlet's report states. The draft had also called for expanding Fannie Mae's 2024 title-waiver pilot into a permanent nationwide initiative and for a manufactured-housing task force co-chaired by the HUD secretary and the FHFA director, with recommendations due within 180 days, per the same account.
Why Affordability Is Still the Backdrop
The order lands against a housing market that has grown increasingly out of reach for lower- and middle-income buyers. The number of homes listed for sale affordable to households earning $75,000 or less in March 2026 was down 60% from March 2019 levels, according to a Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies blog post. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis tracks a Housing Affordability Index designed to measure whether a typical family can afford the monthly mortgage payment on a typical home, with any reading above 100 signifying that a median-income household has more than enough income to qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced home, per data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Industry analysts aren't expecting the order to flip that script overnight. Analysts at KBW said the order's impact on mortgage companies and the broader market is likely to be limited, the same HousingWire report notes, pointing out that refinances account for only around 7% of title premiums industrywide. Forecasters cited in the outlet's earlier draft coverage had also anticipated a sluggish mortgage market heading into 2027 under what they described as a higher-for-longer interest rate environment.
Industry Reaction Is Cautiously Supportive
The National Association of Realtors weighed in with a statement saying it would review the administration's proposals, adding that the group looks forward to working with federal policymakers to advance practical solutions that lower costs and expand housing opportunities, according to a statement posted on NAR's newsroom. The order follows an earlier housing-related action from the administration: on Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order intended to prevent large institutional investors from buying up single-family homes that could otherwise go to individual families, according to a White House fact sheet.
As initially reported by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, the signing came days after Trump traveled to Park City, Kansas, to rally for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roger Marshall. The mortgage-insurance pilot includes eligibility constraints and implementation steps.
