In a shift from his recent messaging on affordability, President Donald Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Jan. 29, that he wants housing prices to stay high — arguing that lowering home values would unfairly benefit people who, in his view, “didn’t work very hard.”
“People that own their homes, we’re gonna keep them wealthy. We’re gonna keep those prices up,” he said. “We’re not gonna destroy the value of their homes so that somebody who didn’t work very hard can buy a home.”
He added that his administration would aim to make buying a home easier by reducing borrowing costs, while still prioritizing current homeowners’ equity.
“We’re gonna make it easier to buy, we’re gonna get interest rates down, but I wanna protect the people that, for the first time in their lives, feel good about themselves,” he said, describing homeowners as people who “feel like… they’re wealthy people.”
Trump then returned to the point more directly: “There’s so much talk about, ‘Oh, we’re gonna drive housing prices down.’ I don’t wanna drive housing prices down, I wanna drive housing prices up for people that own their homes, and they can be assured that’s what’s gonna happen.”
His Earlier Posts Focused on Lower Costs and Corporate Buyers
The comments come weeks after Trump publicly emphasized housing affordability, including support for limiting corporate ownership of single-family homes.
“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” he wrote on Truth Social on Jan. 7. He blamed “Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress” for pushing that goal out of reach, particularly for younger Americans.
He added that he was “immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes,” and said he would call on Congress to codify the move: “People live in homes, not corporations.”
The next day, he posted again, promising action to lower borrowing costs and monthly payments.
“I am instructing my Representatives to BUY $200 BILLION DOLLARS IN MORTGAGE BONDS,” he wrote. “This will drive Mortgage Rates DOWN, monthly payments DOWN, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable.”
Cabinet Meeting Ends Abruptly, With Notable Omissions
Trump’s housing remarks weren’t the only moment that drew attention from Thursday’s Cabinet meeting. As he went around the table, he skipped over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. He also ended the meeting without taking questions from reporters — a decision that some in the press corps found unusual.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins said afterward, “I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a cabinet meeting covering the president, whether in this term… or in his first term, where he did not take questions from reporters at the end. It’s extremely rare.”
By skipping questions — and moving past Noem — Trump also avoided broader discussion of the recent immigration controversies in Minneapolis, including the protests following the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the recent attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar while she was denouncing Noem, and detention center updates involving 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who went viral after he and his father were detained by ICE while returning home from preschool.
“There have been a ton of headlines generated around Minneapolis, what’s happening there… That did not come up at all during this Cabinet meeting, and we were there for over an hour and a half,” Collins said. “Not once was Minneapolis brought up, and obviously, no questions were brought up to the president because he did not take questions, despite talking during the Cabinet meeting about how he believes they are the most transparent administration ever.”
