The announcement that President Donald Trump plans to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds using cash reserves at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the latest White House strategy to lower interest rates and address the affordability crisis.
For real estate investors, anything that moves rates down must be seen as a positive. How low rates will go, however, is another question.
How Trump’s Mortgage Bond Plan Works
The president released a statement on Truth Social on Jan. 4 detailing his strategy for the bond buy:
“Because I chose not to sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in my First Term … it is now worth many times that amount—AN ABSOLUTE FORTUNE—and has $200 BILLION DOLLARS IN CASH.
I am instructing my Representatives to BUY $200 BILLION DOLLARS IN MORTGAGE BONDS. This will drive Mortgage Rates DOWN, monthly payments DOWN, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable.”
Realtor.com explained that the shift effectively turns Freddie and Fannie into large, price-supporting buyers of mortgage bonds, similar to pension funds, insurers, and the Federal Reserve.
How Buying Mortgage Bonds Can Move Rates
Here’s a The Big Short-type recap: Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) bundle many individual home loans into bonds that investors buy. Mortgage rates track the yields on those bonds more closely than they follow the 10-year Treasury. When there is strong demand for MBS, prices for those yields fall, which can result in slightly lower rates for borrowers, stemming from lenders repricing new loans against cheaper funding costs.
“There is no question if Fannie and Freddie get back into buying mortgage bonds for their portfolios, mortgage rates will undoubtedly fall,” David Dworkin, president and chief executive officer of the National Housing Conference, a coalition of affordable housing providers, told the New York Times.
“If you look at all the factors that made rates incredibly low from 2020 through 2022, a large influencer was that the Fed was buying mortgage-backed securities,” Jennifer Beeston, executive vice president of national sales at rate.com, told Realtor.com. “When lenders know there’s an end buyer lined up, they can offer lower mortgage rates.”
Realtor.com’s Jake Krimmel put it in perspective, stating that “a one-time infusion of $200 billion—or a series of smaller purchases that add up to it—are not likely to change the mortgage market’s long-term pricing.”
During the pandemic, the Federal Reserve’s MBS holdings swelled to almost $2 trillion after consistent buying. The comparison illustrates why many analysts feel the end result might be limited.
“This could boost GSE revenue in the short term, but buying to intentionally reduce rates has very limited upside,” Michael Bright, a former manager of Ginnie Mae’s portfolio of mortgage bonds, told MarketWatch.
A Note of Caution
Before the 2008 financial crash, Fannie and Freddie created sizable investment portfolios by buying MBSes, which included risky subprime loans. When defaults spiked, those holdings became toxic, leading to a government bailout and a permanent conservatorship that exists today. More MBS buying is bound to trigger bad memories, even though underwriting requirements are far more stringent now than they were before the financial crash.
How Trump’s $200 Billion Bond Move Could Affect Smaller Investors
For landlords of all sizes, the question regarding the president’s latest strategy is, how will it affect interest rates? As analysts interviewed by MarketWatch said, the dip could be modest, shaving a few tenths of a percentage point off a 30-year mortgage rate.
Taken in context, over the life of a loan, that could still add up, and for investors, the additional cash flow it could engender, through refinancing and new purchases, could make a meaningful difference in the battle to stay afloat.
For example, as Realtor.com illustrated, on a $400,000 loan, if the rate drops from 6.16% to 5.75%, the PITI would decrease by $96 per month, resulting in $34,560 in savings over the life of the loan.
Home Prices Have Nearly Doubled Wage Growth
For investors, the more mortgages with fixed-rate debt they have, the more they could potentially save. However, the fundamentals of the housing market, which could really move the needle, won’t be affected by a nominal rate cut. For that to happen, there needs to be a greater supply of homes.
Bankrate suggests there is a shortfall of about 4 million homes in the U.S. housing market, which is affecting house prices. However, as the website reports, this is highly regional, and in some markets where prices are too high to attract buyers, they are falling.
Real estate analytics company ATTOM’s G4 Home Affordability Report found that home prices have continued to outpace wages, particularly in pricey coastal areas, contributing markedly to the affordability crisis.
Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM, said:
“Many Americans were priced out of buying a home in 2025, and affordability remains worse than historic norms in most markets. Still, modest, quarter-over-quarter affordability improvements in many markets at the end of the year offered some encouragement. Over the past five years, home price growth has nearly doubled wage growth, meaning homebuying power in 2026 will depend not only on whether prices level off or decline, but also on mortgage rates and broader economic conditions.”
Without a sizable increase in supply, a rate cut could have a more adverse effect on housing than intended, pushing prices up.
“If consumers are able to afford more homes because monthly payments are lower, home prices tend to rise more quickly,” Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. rates strategy for TD Securities, told CBS News. “So simply lowering the cost of buying a home through the mortgage channel isn’t sufficient to fix the problem in the long run.”
Final Thoughts: Practical Moves for Investors
Many of the president’s recent creative financial plays, such as proposing to ban Wall Street from buying single-family homes and now the $200 billion mortgage bond buy, are unlikely to create seismic shifts in interest rates or the availability of homes. But cumulatively, they could help edge rates down, and that’s what real estate investors need to watch.
The practical move is to take the opportunity to refinance once rates drop—even by a few tenths of a percentage point—to create some extra cash flow and claim a small victory. In a challenging real estate market, every win helps.
