FHFA’s Bill Pulte Slams Homebuilders for Stock Buybacks

President Donald Trump’s administration is targeting homebuilder stock buybacks in its latest dart throw for housing affordability.

Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte railed against share repurchases made by builders, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move follows a similar push by the administration against buybacks in the defense sector.

Companies typically repurchase stock after allocating funds for internal investments and expenses. It provides an opportunity to give money to investors and often leads to a bump in the stock price.

In the eyes of Pulte and other critics, however, companies should be spending available funds to assist consumers, such as by lowering home prices. Pulte, himself a homebuilder, claimed companies were purposely keeping home prices elevated.

“Our preference is to use carrots, but sticks are on the table,” Pulte said in regards to penalizing those who run afoul of the administration’s mission, particularly those that rely on financing from Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae; the FHFA regulates those enterprises and each is chaired by Pulte.

Homebuilders “need to do the right thing by the American people if they’re going to have access to our liquidity,” Pulte added.

While the impact of buybacks on housing affordability is difficult to ascertain, there’s no doubt that the top public homebuilders delved into the repurchasing market in big ways last year. During their last fiscal years, D.R. Horton and Lennar spent $4.3 billion and $1.7 billion on buybacks, respectively.

The PulteGroup, which the FHFA director used to be on the board of, repurchased $900 million in stock in the first three quarters of its most recent fiscal year.

The Trump administration is growing interested in pursuing avenues towards affordability as it grows into one of the top issues ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Recent days have seen proposals for Fannie and Freddie to buy up to $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities and a plan to ban large institutional investors from purchasing more single-family homes.

— Holden Walter-Warner