The White House says it wants to make it easier to buy a home—something that's counfounded many Americans for years now.

The plan: improve access to mortgages and boost home construction. President Donald Trump last week issued two executive orders targeting the issue, one which aims to cut mortgage regulations to draw more small community banks into the market and the other which seeks to encourage more homebuilding by reducing federal housing regulations, including rules focused on energy, water and environmental protection that builders say add costs and delays.¹²

Why This Matters

Housing affordability affects everything from household budgets to inflation, since home prices and rents are major components of consumer spending and economic stability. Policies that increase housing supply or expand access to mortgages can influence home prices, borrowing costs, construction activity, and even broader market sectors like banking and real estate.

To help encourage homebuilding, the orders also instruct federal regulators to provide incentives for state and local governments to streamline their own rules governing home construction.³

The orders "get at the root of the housing affordability problem by eliminating obstacles to build more homes and providing better access to financing,” said Bill Owens, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders.⁴

The supply of available homes for sale has been the key factor driving home prices higher. A recent Realtor.com study showed that the housing shortage grew worse in 2025, with the number of additional homes needed to meet demand topping 4 million.

“America’s housing affordability crisis is fundamentally a supply problem, and solving it requires removing the barriers that make it harder and more expensive to build homes,” said Shannon McGahn, executive vice president at the National Association of Realtors.⁵

High borrowing costs are also stifling the housing market. Elevated mortgage rates make it more expensive to buy a house and discourage owners locked into lower rates from listing their homes. While mortgage rates often move in tandem with bond rates, the White House said reducing regulatory burdens for lenders and bringing more of them into the market will also ease borrowing costs. (Here's how much one study found rates would need to fall to boost housing affordability.)

The orders direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to tailor lending rules to bring more small banks into the mortgage market and federal banking regulators to modernize the appraisal and underwriting processes.⁶

“America’s housing finance system is the best in the world because it’s competitive,” said Bob Broeksmit, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, in a written statement. “We support efforts to increase bank participation in mortgage lending and servicing, and the goal should be to revise overly burdensome rules for lenders of all sizes and business models.”⁷

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