Trump's plans for the housing market
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Across america, millions of people are feeling the burden of high housing costs. And during his campaign, president and elections, ald d trump promise to do something about that. But what exactly is that something? Today in the show, npr Laural wars' y who covers housing, explains trumps ideas for the housing market that's coming up after the break.

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R. Laura mi. What is up?

Hey.

brian uh, Laura, you cover housing h as one of your beats for npr. So thank you so much for coming on the indicator to break down what trumps housing plans are for us.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a really important topic. So glad to be .

hear just to set at the table, back in september, Donald trump gave this speech at the economic club of new york and one of the things he talked about is housing.

Families now need to n and estimated one hundred and ten thousand dollars year to afford a typical home, meaning sixty five percent of households are locked out of buying.

So for a lot of people, the housing market is unaffordable right now. What does trump s say he wants to do about this?

yes. So some of trumps ideas are more focused on increasing the housing supply in the country, and some of them are more focused on building demand, which means basically making housing more affordable. So on the supply side, uh, two things that he's talked about a lot.

One is deregulation, cutting unnecessary regulations and red tape that raise housing costs. And the other thing is opening some portions of federal land to housing to building new housing on federal land. Now on the demand side, he's talked about reducing mortgage rates by quotes, slashing inflation.

And the other thing that has come up a little bit is promoting home ownership through tax incentives and supporting first time home buyers. And then another idea that he has connected to housing is his immigration policy. So he's talked a lot about deporting immigrants were in the country illegally. Um and that would end up having effects to both supply and amount.

okay. So let's go through these one at a time and just unpack a little bit um and maybe working backwards, we could start with the demand side of the equation. So republicans in their platform have called for tax incentives and support for first time homebuyers. Any details yet on what this would look like under a trump administration?

Um not really IT was in the platform, but IT isn't something that trump has really talked about very much at all. Um so it's really not clear what the plan is sort of incentives are talking about um if the idea is downpayment assistance. And it's not clear that, that would really bring down housing costs because many economists warn that incentives like that can sort of juice demand by giving more buyers money and bringing more buyers into the market. But I can also provides some really useful assistance that helps some people buy a home when they otherwise couldn't.

And the other piece that republicans have talked about doing is, quote, slashing inflation. And truth says that will help make mortgage .

rates more affordable to office. We will make housing much more affordable as inflation is tamed. Interest rates will dramatically for that will be down.

So what do you think trump is saying here?

Yeah well, um I think it's one of those cases where it's easier said than done. You know markets rates are still pretty high. And if they were super easy to bring down without causing other consequences for the economy, you know, I think probably the by administration, you would have already done that.

But that's really not how IT works. I mean, the president doesn't set mortgage rates and nor does the fed. Inflation has already come down a lot, but IT hasn't really brought down market rates. And there's also concerned that a the broader economic policies that trump is proposing will be inflationary and that that won't help bring down mortgage costs either.

So I guess those promises still a little bit hazy. Trump has been a bit more explicit on his ideas for increasing housing supply. So let's talk about those. One of them is a promise to cut regulations.

We will eliminate regulations to drive driver possing course with the goal of cutting the cost of a new home and half. We think we can do that. The regulations alone caused thirty percent real.

What kind of regulations is trump king about here? And would cutting them actually help?

He has been very vae about this, and i'm not sure we know exactly what he means. IT could mean energy efficiency requirements or could be environmental regulations. And then the other thing that's important to mention here is that there is red tape.

There is regulation in building homes, but much of that regulation is at the state and local level. And so you know a lot that adds to that cost. There is probably not stuff that trump is directly going to address himself.

What about this idea that trump is also proposed about opening up portions of dera land to large scale housing development?

This is an idea that trump talked about on the campaign. Il a lot. And you know I don't think he's talking about um you know our national parks um with new tracks of housing.

But what I think he like there won't a new apartment building next to a guys.

I mean, I I am going to say I hope now you know I think the idea here and this has had some bipartisan support is that there's all these federal lands, you know and this is more like land probably that's owned by the bureau of land management. For instance, some land near lost bag as some land near phoenix. Um these are places that have seen housing costs go up all really significantly pretty quickly um and building new housing, you know what to add to the supply and could bring housing costs down um but there are reasons to believe that this might be you know not some big lam dunk that's gonna really affect housing Prices across the country, namely that you much of these federal lands aren't well located near jobs centers where people want to live and also that a lot of these lens are pretty remote and to build out there is gone. Acquire um a lot of money towards infrastructure ah that is really going to increase the cost of building out there.

Finally, trump has promised that his administration will commence master potations of undocumented immigrants when he takes office, and he has claimed that this would also help address the housing shortage. What is your reporting found about this claim?

What I heard from economists is that you there is some underlying supply and demand question here. They told me that immigrants are not the main thing driving a housing costs. But there is some effect, as there is with any population growth.

How much in effect this really has is unclear because a lot of undocumented immigrants to the country double up in housing and IT appears that most are renters. So if they are, you know, removed from that housing, it's not clear how many housing units that would actually vacate there. Some debate about, you know, the number of immigrants that we're talking about here, but this is not the primary factor that's driving a housing Prices.

And then there could also be a big effect on the supply portion of this, which is that undocumented immigrants make up an estimated quarter of construction workers in this country. So if all these folks are suddenly know either deported or worried about being deported and feel like they can show up to work, and that's gonna a huge effect on the home building industry. And I could cause a lot of appeal, al, there. And it's very reasonable to expect that, that would raise Prices for building new homes.

So so looking ahead, are there any other policies you'll be watching for against potential impact on housing?

Yeah, well, the other thing that trump has obviously talked a lot about on the campaign trail is terf s he wants to h slapped terrify upwards of ten percent or twenty percent on foreign main products um and that includes building materials and all kinds of things that go into new homes like garaged doors, air conditioners, just the lumber to build the homes themselves.

So you know I think we can expect that if those turfs, you know, come to pass, then that is just going to raise the cost of construction and the end of these items in homes. And that costs will be passed longer. Home buyers.

npr lower warmly. Thank you so much for breaking down what I imagine will be an evolving policy picture for trump approach to the housing market in stage. This episode was produced by Angel creators and engineer by Jimmy Kelly. IT was factor ked by sir what is caking can and edits to show and the indicators production of npr.

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