Trump announced executive orders including a $200 billion purchase of mortgage-backed securities that dropped rates to a five-year low and cut typical mortgage costs by $5,000 annually. Hannah Hammond says the move helps an affordability crisis but warns that rising oil prices from Iran tensions could push rates back up.
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Today I'm signing two historic executive orders continuing my administration's efforts to help more of our citizens achieve the dream of homeownership. It's called the American Dream. Thanks to our purchase of $200 billion in mortgage bonds, mortgage rates recently reached the lowest level in 5 years. This dramatically reduces monthly payments for new homebuyers. The annual cost of the typical new mortgage is down almost $5,000 since I took office.
This is definitely a good strategy to get interest rates to lower. And we definitely have an affordability crisis right now in the United States. So I'm glad that Trump is taking action and doing things to suppress interest rates because everyone's feeling the pressure who's out there trying to buy a new home. However, we do have some other conflicts now that have popped up, like the war or excursion, as Trump would call it, in Iran, which inflates oil prices, which creates inflation, which creates upward pressure on mortgage rates. So it'll be interesting to see where rates play out. I think we're going going to be higher for longer with this excursion in Iran that is going on. But this is definitely helping with him buying the mortgage-backed securities and creating some release in the pressure on the interest rates. But hopefully this will be mitigated by what Trump just shared with us, and we can keep these mortgage rates suppressed so we can have more affordability for homeowners in America.