'A lot of uncertainty': How Trump is aggravating a troubled housing market
Construction workers and electricians wait in line during a lunch break, as they build California's largest battery storage facility on a 43-acre site in Menifee, California, U.S., March 28, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
President Donald Trump's policies appear to be exacerbating high home prices, NPR reports.
“Home prices are out of reach for many who would like to buy. And the tariff drama under President Trump has both made it more expensive to build new homes and made the future more unpredictable for would-be homebuyers,” reports NPR. “The result is a country where builders want to build, and buyers want to buy — but the future is too much in doubt.”
A May survey of builder confidence conducted by Wells Fargo and the National Association of Home Builders, rates home builder sentiment as dropping to a level not seen since November 2023. High home prices were one of the issues then candidate Trump blamed his predecessor’s for.
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“Under this administration, our current administration, groceries are up 57 percent, gasoline is up 60 and 70 percent, mortgage rates have quadrupled, and the fact is it doesn’t matter what they are because you can’t get the money anyway,” Trump said in his RNC speech last year.
A PBS fact-check of the claim revealed home prices had actually only doubled, but Trump had vowed in the same speech: “Starting on Day 1, we will drive down prices and make America affordable again. We have to make it affordable. It’s not affordable. People can’t live like this.”
Despite that, numbers show the median existing home sales price continued to climb nationally, to $414,000, which is an all-time high for the month of April and the 22nd consecutive month of year-over-year price increases, NPR reports. While home prices are up nearly 50 percent since before the pandemic, mortgage interest rates crept up to 6.86 percent last week for a 30-year fixed-rate loan.
"The tariff debate has created a lot of uncertainty," says Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders. “… Wood framed homes represent about 90% of single-family home building and about a quarter of softwood lumber that we use comes from Canada.”
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Trump issued a 14.5 percent tariff on Canadian lumber, up from slightly more than 8 percent last August. Dietz told NPR the average price tariffs add per single-family home is nearly $11,000.
Read the full NPR report here.
