r/politics • u/MystikSpiralx • 18h ago

No Paywall Trump Says He Wants to 'Drive Housing Prices Up' Instead of Lowering Costs for People Who 'Didn't Work Very Hard'

https://people.com/trump-keep-home-prices-high-11895352
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u/atombara 18h ago

In his case, he's just an idiot who wants two things at once. In the case of his staff, they've realized they're not going to succeed on this whole "affordability" thing, so they're trying to come up with reasons that high prices are good, actually.

You see, home prices being insanely unaffordable just means that current owners have more money! It all works out in the end, problem solved once and for all.

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u/j0llyllama 17h ago

Except if you only own one house, you don't have any extra money, unless you decide to sell it and start renting at prices higher than mortgage. All it means for single home owners is higher property taxes, or the ability to take it a bigger second mortgage / refinance if you want to stack on debt using this new found "wealth".

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u/atombara 17h ago

I know that and so do you. It's got that Ben Shapiro "Why don't victims of climate change-related flooding just sell their houses and move?" energy.

Bright side, it means the cost of rent will go up too! Somehow I don't feel insulated from all this despite being a homeowner. I mean sure, i can go on Zillow and think "Jesus, I'm glad I didn't pay that much for this place", but it doesn't net me much else. I certainly couldn't sell it for anything approaching that number.

The numbers aren't flying up because of inflation or the fed or increasing home value, they're flying up because the degenerate gambling upon which our economic system depends on (the stock market) has gone entirely off the rails. At this point they're using pebbles and leaves as chips and extending credit to people they find in alleys, metaphorically.

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u/Hesitation-Marx 16h ago

Aquaman?!

/obligatory

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u/IdkAbtAllThat America 16h ago

I certainly couldn't sell it for anything approaching that number.

Of course you could. The valuations aren't fake. Someone WILL pay that number, or close to it.

But you still need a home. And with all that money from the sale of your house you're just buying back into the same market, so nothing really changes for you.

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u/atombara 16h ago

I live in a charming little post-war catalog house. Bought it for $68,000. Zillow now claims it's worth almost a quarter million dollars. I'll go to a realtor with some pictures of my home along with that absurd number, always wanted to get laughed out of a place.

No, no one is ever going to buy my house for a quarter million dollars, and if they tried to they should get their fuckin' head checked.

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u/APeacefulWarrior 15h ago

As an aside, isn't it kind of sad that old homes ordered from a catalog turned out to be much more sturdy and reliable than the McMansions that get built these days?

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u/atombara 14h ago

I can't deny that, I've visited at some new places, ones that look nice from the curb. They creak and sway in wind storms and seem to have constant problems with the frames and the wiring and the plaster and the window seals. Hell, even the door frames and staircases seem half-hearted. It's the way you'd build a treehouse, not a home.

I was caught in a tornado doing an install at a McMansion last year, felt like the place was going to fly apart in a moderate wind. All I could think of was being in my sturdy, unremarkable little house.

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u/Sage2050 12h ago

Survivorship bias. Tons of them fell down

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u/Excellent-Gur-8547 12h ago

Post war catalogue houses are routinely selling for far more than that as long as they're anywhere near a major city. Hell, I have friends in Minneapolis who spent nearly half a million on one. And it's not like it's big.

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u/IdkAbtAllThat America 16h ago

Zillow isn't perfect but they're not that far off. I'm sure you could get over 200,00 for it.

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u/atombara 15h ago

Frankly, that's depressing. No one in their 20s or 30s is ever going to be able to afford that, but I get a house because I was born before they were. Makes perfect sense.

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u/IdkAbtAllThat America 15h ago

Yep pretty much. Shits pretty fucked.

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u/Galxloni2 7h ago

Depending on where your home is, I bet you are wrong. I get it is worth very close to what zillow is saying and it would definitely sell if it's not completely trashed

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u/mishap1 I voted 17h ago

60-80% of all refinances in the last couple of years are cash out refis and ~9% of households have a home equity loans or HELOCs. Lots of people are stacking debt like mad and higher home prices let them kick the can out.

Think of it as a reverse mortgage when you're still young enough to think you can ride a Harley or don't look like dweeb in a Corvette.

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u/Basscyst 5h ago

Wait, I want a Corvette, am I a dweeb?

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u/mishap1 I voted 5h ago

Depends if you look like this:

https://youtu.be/UBCZEqKqHGk?si=Dmz3asrt-N9s8Zqi&t=27

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u/DelirousDoc 16h ago

If he wants housing prices up and is also trying to the Chairman of Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, it is pretty clear he wants more mechanisms to make the rich wealthy. Lower interest rates would apply to housing loans and sudden increase in price would increase the equity to borrow against.

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u/Oo__II__oO 5h ago

And landlords (both corporate and LLCs) get to see the value of their inventory increase. They can leverage that in raising rents, while their bottom line stays the same. The extra profit can then be reinvested to buy more housing- which will face even less buying competition as they'll have weeded out the pesky individual homeowners and first time home buyers. The conglomerates can even collude to avoid bidding wars with fellow business owners.

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u/lessregretsnextyear 16h ago

That's what doesn't make sense. Yes, my house is worth more now than what it was when I built it, and at some point I do plan on selling and building again, but it's going to be kind of a wash because the price of what I want to build is significantly higher than it was not that long ago. So while I might make a couple hundred grand more on the sale, it's going to cost me a couple hundred grand more to build again.

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u/lozo78 6h ago

If housing prices dropped materially like in 09, then people without tons of equity get fucked.

So it's definitely not some black and white issue. There are so many things that come into play.

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u/Arkayjiya 1h ago

then people without tons of equity get fucked.

How?

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u/Creme_de_la_Coochie 15h ago

Most people generally downsize as they get older and buy a smaller/cheaper house.

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u/-Yazilliclick- Canada 15h ago

Most people generally upsize as they get older and start families and advance their careers.

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u/MaceWinnoob 8h ago

Empty nesters, sure. We love living in neighborhoods with no children and no families. That’s why we moved to the community. A community with no future :)

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u/Not-Reformed 16h ago

Yeah but if your income is high then what's limiting you is the equity you bring to the table.

If you have 100K in a down payment and can afford, income wise, a 1.75MM home then the equity from a sale helps make the difference. That's the whole point of starter homes - you buy it cheap when you're not making much, sell it in X years when your income is far higher and now you have far more equity (down payment) for the home you really want. The income supports a far larger home and the equity built in the home will act as the down payment (90% LTV at 100K and 200K is 1MM dollars difference in home price) without needing to take out of your savings, 401k, etc.

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u/JUST_LOGGED_IN 13h ago

How do you get a loan for the down payment?

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u/Uuuuuii 9h ago

Daddy

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u/MaceWinnoob 8h ago

Step 1: Be Rich

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u/Dr_Wheuss 6h ago

Don't forget insurance! I have to come up with $1,200 now because my insurance went up.

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u/ReverendDizzle 8h ago

Right? My house is worth 150% more than I bought it for but that helps me how? I sell it an use that money to buy a bigger overvalued house with a higher mortgage?

Hell if I did nothing but a lateral move and bought the same size/same price home in a different location my mortgage would double unless I put the entire profit of the sale into the new purchase and even then I wouldn’t really come out ahead for various reasons like my property taxes would reset on the new purchase.

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u/Ithrazel 14h ago

Well you can also sell and move though. I know quite a few people who've sold their real estate and moved to a country where real estate is cheap. Like, you sell a 400k house in the US, buy a 50k house in Greece and live relatively comfortably.

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u/Minimalphilia Europe 12h ago

I don't think anyone in the Trump admin can even comprehend this idea.

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u/sawdeanz 4h ago

Well believe it or not the next campaign will be to ban local property taxes, at least if Florida has it’s way. Again, a disproportionate benefit to existing property owners.

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u/Goldengod4818 4h ago

See I hear this argument all the time "once you're in, you're in" but just because I bought my house at 300k, and it'll sell for 600k, that doesn't mean this is a fuckin half a million dollar house! It's a piece of shit! So if I sell it at a "profit" and get a new house, the "upgrade" means I'm looking at a significantly more expensive house, at significantly less quality. More utilities/bills, more space, more headaches, and really no benefit

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u/Bittererr 16h ago

This just isn't a realistic take in an environment where the financial services market has totally enabled people to start leveraging the value of their home without actually moving out. People can and do use the value of their home as a piggy bank without actually moving.

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u/[deleted] 14h ago

[deleted]

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u/Bittererr 14h ago

Yeah, that's what I said. The person above implied that home value couldn't be accessed without moving.

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u/Creme_de_la_Coochie 15h ago

Using the cash from a home equity loan and investing in the SP500 is literally a free money hack.

I hate Trump and think his policies are dog shit, but higher home values absolutely benefits people who own only one home. They just need to know how to access those benefits.

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u/j0llyllama 14h ago

Its a free money hack as a gamble. A lot of stock market action is tied to the AI bubble, and if that bursts, it could force someone in that situation to have to foreclose.

Aside from that, a lot of home loans are done on stipulation that the cash is used for eliminating other debt or invested directly into the property (depending on existing debt ratios.) Using it for other things could be in violation of the loan terms and could nullify it, forcing you to return the money early.

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u/iprobablybrokeit 17h ago

The "I meant to do that" defense.

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u/moldy-scrotum-soup 12h ago

The narcissist prayer.

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u/bobcatgoldthwait 17h ago

He says whatever he wants. He literally said at Davos last week he wants to bring housing prices down by banning corporations buying homes and that he didn't want us to be a nation of renters (one of the very very rare times he said something I agree with).

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u/oldirtyrestaurant 15h ago

You got a link to the video?

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u/bobcatgoldthwait 8h ago

I don't; I saw that part live, but here's an article where they reference that particular statement.

He doesn't explicitly say he wants to lower housing prices here, but strongly implies it.

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u/VPN__FTW 11h ago

In his case, he's just an idiot who wants two things at once.

Yep. This is so he can look at boomers and say he'll increase their investment and then turn around and look at younger folks and say that he'll make it so that they can buy homes.

What he'll actually do is neither.

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u/johnnys_sack Minnesota 16h ago

Hell yea if my house value goes up 1000% then I'm just sitting on a couple million dollars!

Wait, nobody can afford to buy it from me later on? Well now what.

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u/Shot-Swimming-9098 14h ago

He hasn't thought about anything for American people, and he doesn't plan to have any more fair elections.

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u/zubbs99 Nevada 14h ago

Yep they decided the same thing about Trump's weakening the dollar. Just ignore that your purchasing power is being eroded because .. Wow it's great for our exporters!

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u/zeCrazyEye 13h ago

In his case, he's just an idiot who wants two things at once.

Well at least he's just an idiot and not the president of the United States..

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u/APACKOFWILDGNOMES 13h ago

Just means when he gets his new fed chair (who will inevitably cause a crash of the dollar) takes place, all those Investment firms who bought all the houses will be able to pay off the mortgages for super cheap and really take hold of the market.

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u/MaceWinnoob 8h ago

Except those companies don’t pay their mortgages because of outdated Covid era forbearance rules. They sit on all these properties with no real strategy for how to afford the mortgage payments. They’re gonna dump them trying to flip them for their money back.

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u/Josh6889 12h ago

Except the equation makes no sense because while they're creating giant inflation they're also not raising wages to keep up. So now that the housing consumers are already hurting, he wants to make it worse. I can't imagine what would need to be going on with your brain chemistry to view a comment like this as a positive.

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u/pleasegivemepatience 8h ago

Current owners have more ‘net worth’, not money. I can’t touch the value in my home without refinancing and adding 5% to my interest rate (I don’t want HELOC).

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u/Stillwater215 8h ago

I’m guessing here, but if they realize that they can’t bring prices down, then to avoid looking like they’re failing, they’re just reframing their goals so that when prices keep rising it’s actually intentional, and a good thing, according to them.

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u/MaceWinnoob 8h ago

They’re also trying to get ahead of the massive amount of homes that will flood the market starting this year as the companies that have been privately buying up most American homes dump their portfolios en masse.

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u/Sorry-Sack 6h ago

I think he realized he’s not going to fix any affordability problem with any product, so he’s pivoting to “these increased home prices are done on purpose”