Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Promotes Access to Mortgage Credit

EXPANDING ACCESS TO HOME LOANS: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to reduce regulatory burdens that have driven up mortgage costs, limited access for creditworthy borrowers, and weakened community bank participation in lending.

• The Order directs the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to appropriately tailor mortgage rules to help enable smaller banks to facilitate more affordable lending, including modernizing and streamlining regulatory and documentation requirements.
• It calls for Federal banking regulators to revise supervisory guidance to focus on prudent underwriting, rather than overly technical process-oriented approaches to lending, and to support construction lending by community banks.
• The Order directs the CFPB to modernize Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) reporting requirements to reduce compliance burdens and protect borrower privacy.
• The Order directs Federal banking regulators to engage in responsible, safe, and efficient reforms to capital and liquidity rules to remove undue burdens on lending, such as tailoring risk weights to the material credit risk of the exposure, expanding access to longer-dated Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) advances tied to residential mortgage assets, and creating targeted FHLB liquidity programs for entry-level housing, owner-occupied purchase loans, and small residential builders.
• The Order further directs Federal banking regulators to modernize appraisal regulations by, for example, expanding alternative valuation models, reducing unnecessary appraisal requirements for low-risk transactions, and setting clearer timelines for appraisals.
• The Order promotes digital mortgage modernization by expanding electronic signatures, e-notes, and remote online notarization, which is anticipated to reduce lending costs and homebuying timelines.
• Federal banking regulators are further directed to consider whether to adopt new supervisory criteria that promote portfolio mortgage servicing as a core community banking function and otherwise take other actions that lower barriers to entry and costs of operation for community banks in the mortgage lending business.

RESTORING MORTGAGE COMPETITION TO LOWER RATES AND REVERSING MORE THAN A DECADE OF MARKET DISTORTION: President Trump is cutting red tape that has caused community banks to reduce their participation in mortgage lending, reduced competition among lenders that would lower mortgage rates, and made home loans harder to obtain for rural, low- and moderate-income, and first-time buyers.

• Over more than a decade, a wave of regulatory changes - driven largely by the Dodd-Frank Act and subsequent rulemaking - has dramatically increased the cost and complexity of accessing a mortgage.
• Community banks and smaller lenders have retreated from mortgage markets they once served, unable to absorb the compliance costs associated with making, servicing, or holding a mortgage made to community borrowers.
• Outdated appraisal rules and rigid supervisory expectations have slowed lending and increased costs, especially for low-risk loans and refinancings.
• These regulatory distortions have weakened the mortgage market, reduced lender competition that drives down rates, reduced the amount of available capital for creditworthy borrowers, and made homeownership less affordable for millions of Americans.

DELIVERING ON PROMISES TO AMERICAN FAMILIES: President Trump has undertaken an aggressive agenda to tackle the housing challenges facing American families and make the dream of homeownership accessible again.

• Earlier this year, President Trump signed an Executive Order to prevent large institutional investors from buying single-family homes that could otherwise be purchased by families, and called on Congress to codify these policies.
• President Trump has also directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities to further drive down borrowing costs.
• These targeted housing and affordability initiatives build on additional actions President Trump has taken to put more money in Americans' pockets.
  • Overall deregulation efforts in 2025 are projected to save Americans a collective $212 billion - roughly $2,500 per family of four.
  • He signed the Working Families Tax Cuts into law - delivering the largest tax cut in American history and increasing paychecks by over $10,000 annually for a typical family of four.
  • His America First, pro-growth, energy dominance, and deregulatory agenda has cut red tape, lowered inflation and mortgage rates, boosted GDP growth, and brought trillions in investments to the United States.
• President Trump continues to focus on ways to provide more relief to Americans from the economic and financial mismanagement of the Biden era, so families can prosper and achieve the American Dream of owning a home.