Trump administration officials acting strangely, a bill to protect Ohio seniors from foreclosure, and a nation experiencing its fifth blackout in a year. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for the week of Sept. 8-12.
Hit: Fight of the Century. Oh, to have been present at an exclusive Georgetown club where Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent launched into an expletive-thick assault on Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte! A Politico report claimed Bessent learned that Pulte was badmouthing him to President Trump and confronted Pulte by declaring, “Why the f*** are you talking to the president about me? F*** you. I’m gonna punch you in your f***ing face.” The club’s co-owner Omeed Malik intervened while Bessent demanded that Pulte be expelled or he would take him outside to pulverize him. This was quite a switch from the men’s public personas, with Bessent presenting himself as the soft-spoken professorial type and Pulte as the little tough guy acting as Trump’s hatchet man.
Miss: Doing Someone Else’s Job. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went on CNBC yesterday to declare Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could possibly go public later this year, adding that the Trump administration did not want to “sell a lot” of its stake in the two enterprises. “What we want to do is show a mark to market,” Lutnick said. “These are assets that we, the American taxpayers, own, and look how much they’re worth.” That’s all fine, but why is the Commerce Secretary talking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? But Lutnick is not the only Executive Branch official who is doing someone else’s work. Lest we forget, we also have a Treasury Secretary talking about a “housing emergency,” an FHFA director trying to reconfigure the Federal Reserve, and a HUD Secretary obsessed with illegal immigrants. Didn’t anyone in the administration read their job description?
Miss: Where the Jobs Aren’t. Perhaps the most disturbing data this week came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which issued significantly revised numbers on the job market – 911,000 fewer jobs were created between April 2024 and March 2025. Last year, the BLS revised the employment numbers downward by 818,000 jobs. Now, either this affirms an extraordinary level of sloppiness in the BLS data collection process or the Biden-Harris team were kicking the numbers around to hide the failure of their economic policies. Either way, these severe revisions call into question the veracity of government data.
Hit: Protecting Seniors from Foreclosure. A new bill being prepared for consideration by the Ohio legislature seeks to prevent senior homeowners from being foreclosed upon due to delinquent property taxes. State Reps. David Thomas (R-Jefferson) and Adam Mathews (R-Lebanon) introduced the Senior Protection from Foreclosure Act, which they promote as the first legislation of its kind in the nation. The bill declares that properties valued below $750,000 that are owner occupied with an owner who is at least 65 and making some form of payment cannot be foreclosed on, regardless of the delinquency amount. “We have heard from our constituents, calling with real fear of being taxed out of their homes,” said Mathews. This is the latest initiative in Ohio to address the onerous impact of property taxes on homeowners – and don’t be surprised to see versions of this new bill turning up in other states.
Miss: How’s That Communism Working for You? It’s not every day that an entire nation has a blackout, but Cuba isn’t like other nations – this week, it experienced its fifth nationwide power blackout in a year. France24 reports Cuba’s Communist government is struggling to keep the lights on as its recent power generating endeavors – which include the recent installation of Chinese-funded 30 solar parks and floating electric plants rented from a Turkish company – failed to prevent repeated nationwide outages. Funny, but these mishaps don’t occur in capitalist countries – perhaps it is time for the impoverished Cuban people to re-evaluate the value of living in a Communist state?
Miss: Too Little, Too Late. Earlier this week, a circle of New York City real estate executives met to discuss supporting Andrew Cuomo as the candidate to defeat Zohran Mamdani in the city’s upcoming mayoral election. Jeff Blau, the developer of Hudson Yards, and his wife Lisa Blau, an investor, sent an email blast to their peers in the city’s real estate industry that declared, “The only viable candidate with the experience, support and gravitas to defeat Zohran Mamdani is Governor Andrew Cuomo…If we fail to mobilize, the financial capital of the world risks being handed over to a socialist this November. We cannot — and will not — let that happen.” Meanwhile, Mamdani maintains a double-digit lead over the floundering Cuomo and the other candidates for mayor. Maybe the developers should have been more active Cuomo backers before Mamdani’s ascension, or maybe Cuomo (a one-time HUD secretary) should have done a better campaigning job in the Democratic primary that he lost to Mamdani?
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
