Trump says he doesn't want to 'hurt the value' of Americans' homes, is 'very protective' of home owners

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos on Wednesday, President Donald Trump expressed his support for homeowners in America, saying he is "very protective of people that already own a house."

Trump noted that the average 30-year mortgage rate has dropped below 6 percent "for the first time in many years," and added that a major factor driving up housing prices "was the mass invasion of our borders" under the administration of his predecessor, Joe Biden.

"And I have to say one thing about housing, because nobody ever says this. I am very protective of people that already own a house, of which we have millions and millions and millions, and because we have had such a good run, the house values have gone up tremendously, and these people have become wealthy," he said. 

"They weren’t wealthy, they became wealthy because of their house. And every time you make it more and more and more affordable for somebody to buy a house cheaply, you’re actually hurting the value of those houses, obviously, because the one thing works in tandem with the other, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt the value of people that own a house who, for the first time in their lives, are walking around the streets of whatever city they’re in very proud that the house is worth 500, 600, 700 thousand."

He said if he wanted to "really crush the housing market, I could do that so fast that people could buy houses, but you would destroy a lot of people that already have houses." He said that mortgages would become "very high," causing people who got their homes at a lower mortgage rate initially to lose their houses. 

He said that dropping interest rates is "one thing we do want to do, that’s natural, that’s good for everybody," adding that "we should be paying a much lower interest rate than we are. We should. We should be paying the lowest interest rate of any country in the world, because without the United States, you don’t have a country."

Earlier in January, mortgage rates fell below 6 percent for the first time since February 2023, with the average interest rate for a 30-year fixed residential mortgage hitting 5.99 percent.