White House officials are reportedly angry with Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), for influencing President Trump to announce his poorly received plan for a 50-year mortgage to encourage affordable homeownership.
Politico, sourcing its coverage from “two people familiar with the situation,” said Pulte bypassed Trump’s aides to advocate the 50-year mortgage plan directly with Trump on Saturday evening at the president’s Palm Beach Golf Club. Pulte reportedly brought a posterboard with the graphic of President Franklin Roosevelt linked to the “30-year mortgage” while Trump was linked to the “50-year mortgage.” Trump reran the graphic on his Truth Social page to announce the 50-year-mortgage plan.
Feedback to the Truth Social posting was immediate and overwhelmingly negative. One of the unnamed sources in Politico’s coverage complained that Pulte “sold POTUS a bill of goods that wasn’t necessarily accurate. He said, ‘FDR did it, you can do it, it’s gonna be a big thing.’ But he didn’t tell him about all the unintended consequences.”
Another unnamed source added, “Anything that goes before POTUS needs to be vetted. And a lot of times with Pulte they’re not. He just goes straight up to POTUS.”
Many of Trump’s prominent conservative allies came out angrily against the plan, arguing it would create deeper debt by consumers without addressing the core problems that created the evaporation of affordable homeownership. A poor response to the plan was also registered by high-profile real estate industry professionals and financial observers
“The thing that became clear from this latest episode — if it wasn’t already clear — is that Bill Pulte doesn’t know the first f***ing thing about how the mortgage markets operate,” said one of the unnamed sources in Politico’s coverage. “After publicly humiliating the president with his moronic 50-year mortgage plan it’s safe to assume that his days are numbered.”
For his part, Pulte attempted his own version of damage control by claiming on his personal X account that the 50-year mortgage was one piece of “a WIDE arsenal of solutions” that was being developed.
The 50 year mortgage could be an option. The 40 year mortgage is still around I believe. I had one with Washington Mutual back in the day. The 50 & 40 year mortgages should be an option to lower payment rates for borrowers. I’d usually not recommend them due to a slower balance repayment schedule but borrowers need more options. The negative feedback is over the top. The Trump administration is working on several areas to help buyers and borrowers. There is no magic bullet except for a major recession where property prices will drop a lot making sales prices much cheaper but also putting some sellers and owners underwater. Also interest rates would be cut significantly but I don’t think that anyone is really wishing for these events to occur. Housing prices are moderating and even dropping in some areas. Some buyers have a chance to catch up to these prices with their job pay increases along with currently slightly lower interest rates and even lower rates soon to come.
Trump is not doing crap about the housing market. All he cares about is posting and making himself look good. He doesn’t care about consulting any experts he gets something in his mind by someone who flatters him and he goes with it. That is 20 more years of interest a homeowner needs to pay. The only one’s winning are the banks and mortgage companies. If we had more housing and they weren’t in the price range of Pulte’s piece of crap houses but affordable to the middle class then housing prices would come down and 30 year mortgages would be sufficient. Everything Trump touches turns not into gold but crap that’s why he has to put so much fake gold in his gaudy residences and now has ruined the White House with it. The tides are turning and even MAGA is getting furious with how out of touch the born with a silver spoon in his mouth, not worked a day in his life at any hard job, joke of a “President” we have. He doesn’t care about any of the citizens just lining his pockets with as much money as he can before his term is over.
Major TDS problem Deb.
Wow Deb… guess your vote was Blue. Trump works very hard to make our country better. Just not gonna happen overnight. As for 30, 40, 50 year loans… no one keeps them! No one here in LA stays in their homes long enough, or they will refinance. Best thing would be bringing rates down to 5%. 4.5% even better. It was wrong for rates to be soooo low during Biden’s time. But then I guess it did serve as a distraction to all his administration’s other fiascos. Trump is working hard for America’s future. As such, it’s going to be a little challenging to get there. Hard for the folks who don’t know what it means to delay instant gratification or those who rely on parents, assistance, hand outs… those who chose not to work or to contribute to improving their own lot in life. Quit crying & start trying!
Powell could just lower rates 1.5% and pull this country out of our recession. 50% of the economy is tied to real estate, and strangling the economy with artificially inflated rates is good for China, Russia and our other enemies, but hurts America and ordinary Americans, red and blue