In roughly one week’s time, President Donald Trump will take the stage in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, and unveil his plan for making U.S. housing more affordable.
He soft-launched housing proposals in a social media post last week, including “immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes,” specifically noting the affordability impact on younger homebuyers.
First-time homebuyers have watched their purchase share contract to 21% in 2025 from 24% in 2024 and 40% pre-2008, according to the National Association of Realtors.
“I will discuss this topic, including further Housing and Affordability proposals, and more, at my speech in Davos,” wrote Trump, employing his preference for capital letters.
Experts have told Scotsman Guide that anything less than a robust restriction on single-family home purchases across the spectrum of large and small real estate investors would likely do little to increase inventory or improve affordability.
Few other details have emerged concerning Trump’s highly anticipated announcement for improving housing affordability. Politico has reported that the administration is drafting an executive order that would broadly target consumers’ affordability frustrations that the president has described as a “hoax.”
On Day 1 of his second presidential term, Trump issued an executive action titled “Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis.” It included, in part, a vow to pursue appropriate actions to “lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply.”
But almost exactly a year will have elapsed when Trump takes the Davos podium sometime between Jan. 19 and 23, raising questions about why it took one-quarter of a four-year term to provide a concrete plan to address housing affordability.
Over the 12 months since that executive action was unveiled, home builders have observed crumbling margins and a slowing pace of starts, while homebuying remains out of reach for most typical earners.
Any affordability gains that materialized in 2025 stemmed from steadily falling mortgage rates and cooling home prices, data shows, not transformational housing reform.
No serious reforms have emerged from leaders at the White House or at the helm of federal housing agencies like the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Department of Housing and Urban Development, which have focused their efforts on dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and fair housing enforcement, while expanding their capacity for fraud detection — not delivering emergency price relief.
Some of the proposals Trump announces next week may require congressional approval to implement, a typically time-intensive process.
In the meantime, two major bipartisan housing reform bills are currently held up in Congress as a Jan. 30 government funding deadline nears, further raising the stakes for the president’s high-profile address.
