Trump Briefly Tackles Housing in State of the Union

President Donald Trump took a brief moment during his historically long State of the Union address to discuss his administration’s housing priorities.

Though housing affordability is a top concern for markets across the country, Trump spent a brief part of his address on housing, making claims as part of his broader description of economic growth from his first year back in office. When he did touch on housing, he led with his administration’s previously announced ban on investment firms buying homes.

Trump referenced his recent proposal to ban investors with at least 100 single-family homes from purchasing more properties. The details released by the White House earlier this month included a wider net than the 1,000-home threshold midsize investors had hoped.

He cited an attendee to the speech, a single mom of two from Houston who Trump said lost out on 20 home purchases to large investment firms.

“Stories like this are why last month I signed an executive order to ban large Wall Street investment firms from buying up in the thousands, single-family homes,” said Trump.

“Now I’m asking Congress to make that ban permanent because homes for people — really, that’s what we want. We want homes for people, not for corporations.”

As part of his claims of improved costs during his first year, Trump touted cooling mortgage rates and called for low interest rates to preserve home values.

National home prices last year climbed 1.3 percent, which was the weakest full-year increase since 2011, when housing prices fell by nearly 4 percent, according to the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Index for December.

One of the other offerings Trump named in the speech was an announcement for homeowners concerning the rise of data centers. The president announced a “rate-payer protection pledge,” demanding major tech companies provide their own power.

“It will ensure the company’s ability to get electricity, while at the same time, lowering prices of electricity for you,” Trump said.

Tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Anthropic had announced data center cost agreements before the speech. But experts told Politico that the agreements, and announcements by lawmakers like Trump and congressional Democrats, have lacked specifics for homeowners looking to insulate their energy bills from the rush of data center construction.