The Biden administration had a simple explanation for why housing became unaffordable: blame the landlords. As prices climbed and buyers were squeezed out, officials and allies avoided harder questions about inflation, interest rates, and supply.
The Trump administration is now moving in a different direction. In late April, it announced that the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac will adopt updated credit scoring models for the first time in decades — a “historic move,” according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, aimed at expanding access to mortgages and easing costs.
The new models placed more weight on recent financial behavior — not mistakes from years ago — while also factoring in on-time rent payments, giving a more accurate picture of who is actually creditworthy today.
RECLAIMING AFFORDABILITY: A HOUSING AGENDA THAT WILL MOVE WOMEN FORWARD
Everyone knows that when President Donald Trump returned to office, he inherited a mess, but former President Joe Biden’s housing mess has proven the hardest of all to fix. There’s no executive-order switch that fixes it overnight.
That’s because people aren’t united on housing. They’re split on how to handle it depending on whether they’re buyers or sellers.
On one side are homeowners who’ve worked their whole lives to build equity and don’t want Washington wiping out their nest eggs.
On the other are those who feel locked out of the American dream because prices exploded under Biden.
Trump understands something Democrats struggle to grasp: you can’t fix housing by picking one side and punishing the other.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris’s answer was simple-minded: give first-time homebuyers $25,000 in taxpayer-funded down payment assistance.
That sounds nice, but more buyers chasing the same number of homes just pushes prices higher. That’s the equivalent of pouring gasoline on the fire.
Trump’s approach is different. It’s about finding balance.
First, the president is working toward getting rid of the immigration problem that’s pushing up housing costs.
That’s exactly what his Housing and Urban Development Department aggressively started doing in the last few weeks — reviewing roughly 200,000 tenants flagged for citizenship and eligibility issues and tightening the rules for federal housing programs.
Next, he is fixing inflation.
Under Biden, the worst inflation in 40 years crushed affordability.
Then came the Fed’s panic rate hikes. Mortgage rates shot toward 8%. Millions of the public who locked in 3% mortgages stopped selling, freezing supply and pushing prices even higher.
Trump stabilized inflation in his second term. Rates began easing, and mortgage payments started falling. For a typical buyer, even a 1-point drop in rates can mean hundreds of dollars per month back in his or her pocket.
Trump’s modernization of the nation’s credit scoring models is the final cherry on top that will allow more people than ever before to afford these homes.
All of this is real relief, not a government handout that distorts the market.
Talk about a difference from what his predecessor did. Instead of trying to just remove the bad guys from the marketplace, Biden tried to ban math.
This all started when the Biden administration scapegoated the software landlords use to better understand the value of their properties. On the campaign trail, Biden and Harris pointed the finger at this tech every chance they got.
All this software does is analyze market data to give owners rough pricing estimates on their homes. Big deal! But the Biden administration, desperate for anything they could blame, reasoned that enough people were skeptical about artificial intelligence to buy this deflection.
As commentator Jack Posobiec put it, “Sleepy Joe Biden scapegoated algorithms and AI for housing inflation,” whereas the Trump administration is “tak[ing] action, not deflection.”
In sharp contrast to the “ideas” of these liberals, Trump’s housing policy reflects economic realism. That’s not something you see every day in Washington.
For years, the U.S. housing industry has needed leadership that understands how markets actually work — and who those markets are supposed to serve.
HOUSING IS THE AFFORDABILITY ISSUE THAT COULD COST THE GOP IN 2026
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump, the renowned builder and real estate master, is that guy.
Under his leadership, the focus is back where it belongs: protecting families, preserving ownership, and keeping the American dream within reach — not just for corporations, but for average people too.
Paul Teller, a conservative activist, is a former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Vice President, a former special assistant to Trump for Legislative Affairs, and a former chief of staff to Ted Cruz.