With less than two weeks until the midterm elections, the Trump Administration rolled out an executive order (EO) aimed at making some housing costs more affordable.
The mortgage industry welcomed some of the proposals, such as mortgage insurance cancellation for homeowners and reducing interest rates on some federally backed loans, but the general feeling is it doesn’t address most of the pain points for purchase borrowers.
Rising home prices and elevated mortgage rates stuck north of 7% have stalled the housing market. The annualized existing-home sales rate reached 3.99 million units in September, down 2.2% from a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors® (NAR). That level is far below the pre-pandemic average of 5 to 5.5 million annual home sales.
Trump administration officials touted the new order “Decreasing Housing Costs for the American People,” which creates a pilot program to cancel borrowers’ mortgage insurance premium based on current market value and establishes a taskforce for expanding affordable manufactured housing options. It also aims to lower refinance costs by allowing borrowers to waive title insurance when they refinance their homes.
Additionally, the EO directs the Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Agriculture (USDA) to reduce mortgage rates on VA loans for military borrowers and USDA loans for homebuyers of eligible rural properties.
Like the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed over the summer, the order is “well-intentioned” but misses the mark on concrete changes that would proactively help buyers today, says Mark Milam, CEO of Highland Mortgage in Atlanta.
“There’s certainly value in some of these initiatives; it’s just some of them are curiously aimed and timed, particularly when there are so many other levers that could be pulled that would really resurrect or help revive existing-home sales,” Milam says, calling the areas of focus “puzzling.”
“It’s a purchase market recession that we’ve been in for four years, and these (policy changes) are really largely aimed at refinances.”
Unintended risks
According to NAR, the resale market accounts for more than 90% of home sales in the U.S., and it’s the sector struggling the most. But the EO doesn’t address the core issues consumers are facing, experts say.
“Nothing in this executive order is adding an enhanced value to help affordability today,” says Jennifer McGuinness-Lubbert, CEO of Pivot Financial in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Certain items in the order could even add more risk for borrowers, including a proposal to waive title insurance on refinances and appraisals on limited cash-out refis. The proposed appraisal waivers mean the property’s actual value may not be assessed, which doesn’t make sense for lenders. She also cautions that if a borrower’s loan exceeds the property’s value, it could contribute to short-sale delays and make the home harder to sell.
Meanwhile, a title insurance waiver on a refinance could put a borrower at risk if there’s a title dispute later on, as not all title issues are discovered during the initial title search, she explains.
“If that borrower no longer has a policy when they go to sell a house, those (title) issues are going to come up, and who do you think is going to be paying to correct those issues? The borrower,” she says.
Title issues could be problematic for real estate agents—and impact their bottom lines, too, McGuinness-Lubbert points out.
“Realtors® don’t want to be doing the work of finding borrowers to buy properties and then have material title issues come up, and they have to start all over again selling a property once those title issues are cured,” she explains.
“It could be the difference between selling something in 30 to 90 days versus taking years to sell a property. That’s going to decrease, materially, the revenue, or the dollars that Realtors® are making as well.”
Trade associations offer tepid reaction
Most trade association reactions to the order have been measured.
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released a cautiously optimistic statement: “Our lender members welcome these latest initiatives to reduce the costs of refinancing and expand innovative manufactured housing options for potential homebuyers. We also appreciate the EO’s acknowledgment of the need to balance consumer, taxpayer, and GSE interests and will work with the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a timely and thorough implementation.”
Meanwhile, Bill Owens, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), said in a statement that the new order “will help reduce single-family housing and mortgage costs. We urge the administration to continue its efforts to reduce regulatory burdens to make housing more affordable for all Americans.”
However, reaction from loan officers and seasoned mortgage leaders on LinkedIn was overwhelmingly skeptical that the EO would move the needle on affordability.
Several online comments also expressed palpable frustration with Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), who missed a scheduled keynote appearance at the MBA’s recent conference in October and hasn’t appeared at many industry events in 2026 to share FHFA’s vision for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) which remain under conservatorship.
“In the past 18 months, Director Pulte commented about Lisa Cook 122 separate, distinct posts on X,” Milam says. “He’s posted 55 times about home ownership affordability. So three times as many posts about a political adversary who he believes committed malfeasance, and then a third of that we get for helping the rest of the country. I just don’t think the focus is there.”
On X, Pulte praised his boss and the new proposals, writing “President Trump’s Executive Order today is the greatest Housing Executive Order in History. Because of President Trump’s bold actions to put Americans First, millions of Americans will save thousands and thousands of dollars.”
LLPA, g-fee reductions would have immediate impact, experts say
Both Milam and McGuinness-Lubbert emphasize that the Trump administration could make a more immediate impact on loan costs by addressing g-fees, or guarantee fees. The g-fee is a charge the GSEs impose to insure mortgage lenders and investors against credit losses if a borrower defaults.
Milam says g-fees have soared over time, making conventional loans more expensive, and lowering them by about 20 basis points could make the loans more affordable and even lure back borrowers from FHA loans and other programs.
“If they right-size those g-fees, they’re going to recapture the market share they lost to FHA, and the cuts will almost, not fully, but almost pay for themselves,” Milam explains. “They’ll make up what they’re losing in revenue by lowering the G fees in volume; that’s what the rest of the mortgage industry has had to do, too.”
On loan-level price adjustments, or LLPAs, McGuinness-Lubbert says she has proposed adding two Area Median Income (AMI) categories that could allow lower LLPAs for borrowers in certain income profiles.
LLPAs apply only to conventional loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which set specific pricing guidelines. LLPAs are based on factors such as a borrower’s credit score, loan-to-value ratio (LTV) and debt-to-income ratio (DTI). LLPA pricing also depends on loan purpose, occupancy type, loan features and property units.
The EO only addresses LLPAs on refinances—not purchase loans.
McGuinness-Lubbert says she’d also advise policymakers to redo the GSEs’ loss calculations to account for existing risk offsets and then right-size pricing to reflect the actual risk—rather than charging borrowers multiple times for the same risks, she says.
