Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte is demanding that home builders ratchet up production on new housing.
In a post on X, Pulte declared, “Builders who do business with Fannie and Freddie (which is most builders) need to start building out their lot supply, including optioned land which is “ready to go”. More to come on our actions we will take.”
Pulte followed up another post that stated, “Builders need to do the right thing and build out those lots – NOW. And lenders need to do the right thing NOW!
Last October, President Trump posted on social media that homebuilders were “sitting on 2 million empty lots” and directed Pulte to “get Big Homebuilders going and, by so doing, help restore the American Dream!” However, the FHFA and its government-sponsored enterprises lack the regulatory authority to coerce homebuilders into meeting specific production levels.
Pulte also resumed his online attacks on the Federal Reserve chairman with a post that said, “Jerome Powell should resign, immediately.” Powell’s term ends in May, and he has repeatedly stated he had no plans to step down ahead of that scheduled conclusion.
with Pulte’s nose up Trump’s behind, its no surprise that he wants mortgage rates lower – because he’s gonna benefit from it – as most of Trump’s followers do! The charman of the federal reserve has everbody’s interest at heart – not his bottom line
You’re a stereotypical Democrat dumbass who doesn’t understand it’s ok to benefit from reform. Everyone will benefit. TDS is making people wish failure and the reality is nobody has to loose for everyone to win. Factors that drove economic conditions in the past are not the same now principles are like supply and demand.
Mortgage rates need to keep coming down. Builders need to produce more supply. Big Corporations need to be restricted from competing against primary resident buyers. Building and energy costs need to come down more. Trump is trying to make all that happen. Not everything has to always be about “The Resistance”. There are many who “hate” Trump who would favor eliminating private property ownership altogether. What kind of real estate person would countenance such a thing?
maybe they should focus on policy that makes it economically viable to build and certainty for the buyers to buy.
Isn’t that what “they” are trying to do here?
He said “focus on policy”. Demanding that business people do something whether it is beneficial to them or not is not policy but an attempt at coercion.
Enacting policies that would make it beneficial to the builders to build more homes is the solution. i
What a fraud these two are. There’s no great conspiracy by which builders are hoarding lots. They are in business to make money and if the market is there to purchase their product at a price they can deliver that product, they will build it.
I have a better idea! Why don’t we re-direct all those millions of $$ from Trump’s presidential library and White House ball room to building housing? Surely Bill knows how to deliver them at an affordable price?
Home prices are too high and so are interest rates. First time homeowners and move up buyers can’t afford to buy at these prices and rates. Inventory is too low because too many potential home sellers are sitting on 2.5% to 3.5% mortgages. Builders don’t want to expand their production because they’re afraid of a slow absorption rate. They won’t be forced to build but they will be incentivized. The Trump Administration is trying to prime the pump. And that’s a good thing to increase affordability.
Individual lots are harder to build on, than open land. With higher interest rates, it’s not the most feasible way to go. Don’t forget the fees connected to building these days. Somebody needs to do something about that. They’re totally out of control.
Exactly. They come in there and they buy up all the land and then they falsely inflate the prices.
Will Pulte direct his own company to fill up all their vacant lots? With building material tied to the tariffs? His company should become a NON-PROFIT to reduce housing prices.
First of all, the biggest issue with home pricing (including rents) is the wage gap, which keeps getting larger. Inflation never stops. It can be slowed by better wage policy and better tax policy. We already know this current regime doesn’t know (or care, whatever) about how to properly influence businesses through tax policy, all they do is give a trillion dollars away to them because they buy crypto from the shell game baby Donnie set up. Companies used to have to do something called ‘invest’ in themselves. Now they buy back stocks and raise share prices so the CEOs can cash out as billionaires. In the meantime, the bottom 90% of the U.S. income brackets are fighting over only about 25-30% of the created (by them) wealth in the country. That’s right, the top .5% control over 50% of all wealth, and the other 9.5% control the next 20-30%. The working poor have virtually nothing (despite what conservative radio and cable talk shows will keep telling you about SNAP). These are all statistics that are easily found, so go look them up before engaging here.
Why are mortgages not assumable? That would mitigate SOME of the interest rate ‘lock’ problem, right? Now that I can buy into another low rate, I might sell my place after all, and pass on the low rate I have. Sure, some folks will just be starting over with the higher rates, but not everybody. Oh, the lending industry will miss out on refis and new gens? Boo and hoo…are we trying to solve a real problem, or rub everybody’s tum-tum?
Everybody that whines ‘interest rates are too high’ is either under forty and doesn’t know how to read, or older but willfully ignorant. In the late 70s and early 80s, rates were literally triple where they are now…18-22% (depending on score). THAT was ‘high’. Again, prices are up because of inflation (which won’t be made better by lowering the rates, by the way, no matter how much we wish) and supply is short because profit in a capitalistic economic model means builders are building one house in expensive suburbs instead of two or even three in less expensive ones or scattered city lots. Yes, there is too much regulation in many places, definitely, but ALSO, find a builder that if the $6,ooo impact fee went away would ACTUALLY lower the price of their build by a nickel if they could still get the full amount…go ahead, find one, we will wait…UNTIL THE END OF TIME.
Energy costs? That is not the driver of building costs…stop it. That might help actual homeowners, but that is only after we manage to get them INTO a home.
Principles ‘like supply and demand’ do not change. There is not enough supply and a lot of pent-up demand. People are not flocking from the Midwest like so many predicted. Older folks are not giving up a paid-off home to go live in over-priced Nashville or wiped-from-existence-by-hurricanes every-other-year Floriduh with a new mortgage (and no home insurance). That is a reverse glut. Nobody is building the ‘missing middle’ because there is profit, but not as much. It is interesting when two streams of a free market collide and do not cooperate the way one side wants. Like When the rocket surgeon in Floriduh is super pro-business, except for the insurance industry, which suddenly ‘needs to be regulated’ because the insurance companies decided they wanted to make a profit. Or the real estate industry that wants government out of our business…until they want builders to make less money so that we can make more. It would be a great popcorn moment, if it was not so serious and lives were not so altered by the idiocy and hypocrisy of so many involved.
Nice to see a comment from someone who actually thoughtfully analyzes the situation and makes a cogent comment rather than a partisan retort full of hyperbole and name-calling. That wage gap is an insightful point…our problem isn’t that interest rates are too high, historically they’re within a normal range. An argument could be made that home prices are too high compared to other goods and services…especially in regards to older resale homes where material costs are irrelevant. This means it’s an affordability issue which can be solved with either lower prices, or the consumer making more money, or the payback term being extended. That middle one relates to the wage gap and is the tricky one because labour has lost so much negotiating power over the last 45 years, and management holds almost all the cards these days.