The HUD Secretary on a roll, pending home sales on the rise, and Warren Buffett calls it a day. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for the week of Dec. 29-Jan. 2.
Hit: An Honest Man. A big thumbs up for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner for offering a mature opinion on President Trump’s proposal of a 50-year mortgage plan to help reanimate the housing market, stating the idea needed to be studied further before being put forth as a solution to the challenges impacting housing affordability. Said Turner, “It’s very early. I think more research needs to be done on a 50-year mortgage and the other ideas that have been put forth. Because — one thing from a HUD standpoint, from my standpoint, we want to make sure that the housing market is secure.” Unlike Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, who rushed the president into touting the 50-year mortgage, Turner took a more cautious approach to this unlikely (and, quite frankly, unpopular) idea.
Hit: An Honest Man, Part 2. Turner gets another big thumbs up for this week’s release of HUD’s Fiscal Year 2025 Agency Financial Report to Congress, which uncovered more than $5 billion in potential payment errors. This included a potential $77 million error that identified payments made for 29,715 deceased individuals, and a $287 million potential error on payment made for excessively high rents. Unlike other Cabinet members, Turner hasn’t been front and center in the media for most of 2025, but his low-key approach to management has resulted in some much-needed reforms at his department, including the slashing of bureaucratic excesses during the Elon Musk DOGE period and a renewed effort to ensure illegal aliens are not taking advantage of funds and programs that they do not deserve. Here’s hoping that Turner turns up the heat in 2026 with more much-needed changes at HUD.
Miss: Monotonous Predictability. A federal judge with a track record of ruling against the Trump administration’s actions on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a new ruling, this time blocking the White House attempt to stop funding the agency. US District Judge Amy Berman, an Obama appointee, decreed the CFPB can continue to receive funding from the Federal Reserve while rejecting the argument by Russ Vought, the CFPB’s acting director, has argued the Fed has been operating at a loss since 2022 and has no “combined earnings” to fund the agency. However, this is the fourth time in 2025 that Berman came down against the administration on CFPB-related issues – on three separate occasions earlier this year, she slapped down the Trump administration’s attempt to enact mass layoffs at the CFPB. Is it crass to ask for another judge without a predictable bias against the administration?
Miss: No Scapegoating, Please. A big thumbs down for James Fishback, the CEO of the investment firm Azoria who is seeking the Republican nomination to become governor of Florida, after proposing a new down payment assistance program that would be financed by divesting the state’s investment in Israeli government bonds. In a post on X, Fishback declared, “Over the past two years, Florida government entities and taxpayer-funded colleges have sent $385 million to the Israeli government through open-market bond purchases. That money should have been invested in our communities. Instead, it was foolishly sent abroad to fund a foreign government.” Fishback doesn’t realize that Israeli government bonds are investments that have generated strong returns for Florida. It is not foreign aid, and singling out Israel for an economic boycott with the insinuation that the country is somehow responsible for Florida’s housing affordability problems is ridiculous. If Fishback wants to become governor, he needs to ditch the Nick Fuentes-level Groyper talk and offer serious ideas.
Hit: Happy Days Are Here Again? The old year ended with some very encouraging news: A report from earlier this week that pending home sales were up by 3.3% in November from the prior month and up by 2.6% from one year earlier. Lawrence Yun, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, observed, “Homebuyer momentum is building. The data shows the strongest performance of the year after accounting for seasonal factors, and the best performance in nearly three years, dating back to February 2023.” Let’s hope that momentum continues into 2026!
Hit: The End of an Era. This week saw the conclusion of Warren Buffett’s long run as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the age of 95. Buffett is the rare executive who never let his wealth and authority warp his sense of purpose. He still lives same house he bought for just over $30,000 in the late 1950s and his approach to investing was never driven by greed or envy. annual He has been a presence in multiple industries, including real estate – and lest we forget, he began this year with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suing his portfolio company Vanderbilt Mortgage & Finance for allegedly “setting families up to fail when they borrowed money to buy a manufactured home.” That lawsuit came in the final days of the Biden administration and was dropped one month later when the Trump administration came into office. Buffett’s philanthropy gave new meaning to the concept of generosity, but he wisely noted that one did not need to be a billionaire to make an impact. As he observed earlier this year, “When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless.”
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
