Trump Says Housing Prices Should Be Higher, Not Lower

President Trump said he wanted to drive housing prices up rather than down, arguing he did not want to harm the value of homes owned by current homeowners even as housing affordability remains a top voter concern. Economists say the central problem is a large housing shortage that has driven up prices and rents and that the remedy is to increase supply.

Many of the president’s proposals are demand-side measures — including longer-term mortgages, tapping retirement accounts for down payments and pushing for lower interest rates — which can ease borrowing but do little to expand the underlying supply of homes. Federal efforts to expand homeownership over decades have often collided with local limits on building, a dynamic that helped push prices higher.

Homebuilding slowed sharply after the financial crisis and has not recovered to prior levels, contributing to the mismatch between supply and demand.

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