President pushes to limit Wall Street’s footprint in housing
According to Politico, President Trump recently said he will move to ban large investors from acquiring more single-family homes and called on Congress to back the initiative, in a bid to bring down the cost of housing.
“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, adding “that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people.”
“It is for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it,” he said in the message, which was posted shortly after POLITICO requested comment from the White House on its reporting that the administration was considering such action.
The president’s broad side against institutional investors echoes previous Democratic-led efforts to restrict the private equity industry’s involvement in the housing market, and it’s likely to face considerable pushback from an industry that has a long history of beating back Washington-led efforts to rein in its activities.
Several Senate Democrats said they are fully on board and have been pushing the idea for years, adding that it’s time their Republican colleagues joined them. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on Senate Banking, told POLITICO that she already had a bill on restricting institutional investors.
It’s unclear how Trump could limit institutional investors’ purchases of single-family homes through executive action. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation last year that put limits on Wall Street’s ability to buy up homes.
C.A.R. launches “Homeownership Matters”
The CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® announced the launch of Homeownership Matters, a statewide public education and advocacy campaign to make homeownership a critical priority of California’s 2026 housing agenda.
As California lawmakers begin their work for the next year, the campaign calls for enacting legislation that helps working Californians create pathways to homeownership.
Homeownership Matters will educate, engage, and urge policymakers to adopt bold, scalable solutions to expand homeownership access, especially as first-time buyers struggle to break into the market.
Homeownership is how families put down roots, gain true housing security, build inter-generational wealth, and invest in their future.
Fannie and Freddie Are Stockpiling Billions in Mortgages
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have vastly increased their holdings of mortgage-backed securities in recent months, which may have ripple effects that could help push mortgage rates lower.
Since May, Fannie and Freddie have added more than $55 billion in mortgage principal balances to their combined holdings, an increase of more than 30%.
That’s taken their combined mortgage holdings to a whopping $234 billion, the highest in four years, and analysts tell Bloomberg, which first reported the move, that Fannie and Freddie’s holdings could expand an additional $100 billion next year.
“Fannie and Freddie adding to their balance sheets basically represents a boost in demand for mortgage-backed securities,” says Realtor.com® senior economist Joel Berner. “This would shift up the price and down the yield on the going market value for home loans, and that depressed yield would equate to lower mortgage rates.”
In other words, by gobbling up mortgages on their own balance sheets, Fannie and Freddie make mortgages more valuable on the open market, incentivizing lenders to make more loans and lower their interest rates.
FTC analysis shows consumers have lost millions to rental scams.
New analysis from the Federal Trade Commission shows that since 2020 consumers reported nearly 65,000 rental scams, many of which originated from fake listings on sites like Facebook and Craigslist, and losses totaling about $65 million. People ages 18 to 29 were three times more likely than other adults to report losing money to a rental scam.
Rental scams usually involve fake rental listings, which can often look very real, and copy information from legitimate listings but instead contain the scammers’ contact information.. Such scams often pressure consumers to provide money upfront before seeing the rental property in person or push consumers to prove they are creditworthy by sending screenshots of their credit scores.
Scammers often collect personal information from consumers such as their Social Security number, driver’s license, or paystubs to steal their identity.
NAR 2026 Forecast Summit Predicts Positive Recovery, With Regional Affordability Hurdles
Lower mortgage rates and inventory gains are expected to attract more buyers back to the market in 2026. With local variations in mind, NAR forecasts an overall 14% increase in existing home sales.
Top economists have one word to sum up the housing market for 2026: opportunity. Lower mortgage rates and a rising supply of homes are expected to open up the housing market in the new year—something the real estate industry and potential home buyers and sellers have been waiting for, following three years of stagnation.
The National Association of REALTORS® is forecasting a double-digit—14% increase—in existing home sales for 2026. “In 2026, we expect higher inventory, modest improvements in affordability and more accommodating monetary policy from the Federal Reserve will help more Americans buy their next home,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.
If mortgage rates drop to 6%—as NAR projects for 2026—it would mark a full percentage point drop from the roughly 7% average at the start of 2025. That shift could unlock an estimated 5.5 million additional qualified home buyers nationwide, including about 1.6 million renters, who could finally make the leap into homeownership.
“Lower mortgage rates will save the day” for the housing market next year, Yun said. They’ll help improve affordability, but meaningful progress will also depend on increased housing inventory to create more opportunities for buyers and sellers in 2026, he said.