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As we pass President Trump’s first 100 days in office, let’s face it — It’s been one heck of a ride. No matter what side of the aisle you are on, many hoped 2025 would be the year the real estate market started to come back. Perhaps not roaring like 2021, but there was hope for lower interest rates and promises of making things more affordable, from gas to groceries to homes.
What we have seen has been anything but. If we thought the market slowdown was tough during 2023-2024 as interest rates started to rise, coupled with the collision of inflation and high prices coming off the pandemic real estate boom, we hadn’t seen anything yet.
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Flash forward to 2025, which started with optimism for an active market, has turned out to be anything but in many areas across the country. Here’s a recap of Trump’s 100 days from the real estate practitioner’s point of view.
Return to office and DOGE
The beginning of the year started with cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the slashing of jobs left and right. Whatever your opinion on those jobs, the point is that everyone has to live somewhere, so incomes were slashed, which affected those who lost their jobs with respect to housing, whether that was renting or buying.
Buying plans were pushed back or canceled, and in some cases, people needed to sell their property to free up cash, uncertain when they would find a job again.
Ask anyone who has been in the job market, and no matter how talented or well-connected you are, finding a job is beyond a full-time job in and of itself, with tons of applicants vying for the same position to the point where recruiters only look at the first handful of resumes. Others lived on pins and needles, waiting to hear their fate and couldn’t plan for the future.
Return-to-office mandates also affected the real estate market, as some people had to move from the locations they had fled to during the COVID pandemic. This meant they had to sell their home, and buying at the height of the market doesn’t leave a lot of room for profit.
In addition, DOGE cuts impacted the commercial office market, which has already been struggling post-COVID. The federal government was looking to downsize a large portfolio of thousands of leases that could impact numerous cities, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Arlington, Virginia.
CFPB funding slashed
Speaking of DOGE, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) funding was slashed in the blink of an eye. What was long known as a trusted institution consumers could go to for assistance with resolving financial matters, like credit cards, checking and savings accounts, auto loans, mortgages, etc., was upended. While a federal judge has blocked some attempts to completely shut down CFBP, the future of this agency remains uncertain, placing consumer protection at risk.
HUD Overhaul
DOGE continued on, making cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, laying off thousands of employees — nearly half of its workforce. HUD addresses issues with regard to fair housing, housing assistance and community development.
Scott Turner was nominated to be the secretary of this agency, and though his nomination was not without controversy, he was confirmed in a relatively low-drama vote, 55-44. Turner said he would expand the Opportunity Zones Program, loosen zoning regulations and fees, and reduce the size of the Section 8 housing voucher program.
His confirmation hearing left more questions than answers, with few concrete plans or solutions to address serious questions about various topics, including affordable housing, illegal immigration and its relation to housing and insurance, as well as numerous critical issues.
As of this writing, I don’t think we have a good idea of what is going on with HUD since Turner was confirmed, and its impact on a myriad of housing issues remains to be seen.
Pulte at the helm of Fannie and Freddie
Bill Pulte, the grandson of the homebuilder and founder of the Pulte Group, was confirmed as head of the Federal Housing Finance Corporation, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Pulte has shaken things up and purged 14 board members. He claims he is going to work to make buying a home more affordable and cut unnecessary fraud and waste. One of Pulte’s first cuts was gutting Fannie and Freddie minority homeownership programs.
In addition, there is talk about privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but how that would be handled is tricky. Privatizing these institutions could result in higher mortgage rates, which we are already dealing with.
More to be determined on how Pulte will make housing more affordable in light of all of this disruption. While privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may sound like a good idea, in reality, it will be far more difficult than it appears.
Tarrifs
When President Trump announced the implementation of tariffs, all started to go haywire with the stock market, treasury bonds and interest rates, which ultimately rolled to the real estate market. The uncertainty of tariffs and what would be implemented wreaked havoc on consumer confidence.
Homebuilders were concerned about the impact of costs on building materials and how that would ultimately cause increased prices for consumers. Consumers whose livelihoods could be impacted by tariffs were concerned about job stability and security, not to mention general concern over prices for everyday goods and possible shortages due to countries perhaps scaling back doing business with the United States, which supplied those goods.
There has been a different narrative every week with respect to tariffs, with threats and then delays, followed by more threats, scaled-back tariff amounts and then delays. Interest rates have been see-sawing depending on what the stock market was doing. The verbal football between President Trump and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell did not help.
Mortgage lenders shared they were going through multiple price changes during a single day, and it was difficult to counsel buyers who had just gone under contract on a home as to when to lock in a rate.
Some buyers who were under contract to buy a home cancelled due to the uncertainty of how all of this would affect them. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to buy that second home if they could lose their job or their business would be impacted. Showings have been paused on properties in many parts of the country.
I experienced this on a listing I had in Florida that had great activity before the tariff talk started. Then things began to freeze with little to no activity. Others with listings in the same community reported the same.
On the West Coast, while working with a couple of different buyers who were actively writing offers, we were one of only two offers on properties.
This was very different from March, where in one case, my buyer was one of 13 offers on a property in a hot price point of under $1.4 million. The impact of the tariffs on the real estate market was somewhat mitigated, allowing both of my buyers to open escrow successfully. However, the stock market’s volatility was not comforting to my first-time homebuyer clients, as they watched their down payment money fluctuate daily.
The bottom line is that markets, businesses and consumers don’t like uncertainty. It can be hard to plan through the unknown when the only certainty is uncertainty.
The first four months of 2025 have been a wild ride. Real estate markets in many areas of the country were already struggling against challenges from high home prices, inflation and insurance in a post-pandemic world. Now, some of these markets are seeing sellers who bought during the pandemic at high prices sell their homes.
Some of these properties have been lingering on the market due to being overpriced in the first place, and many properties are undergoing price adjustments to find the sweet spot at which buyers will respond. Anything overpriced relative to condition continues to sit on the market as more buyers seek turnkey and move-in-ready homes.
No one seems to have the bandwidth to take on things that need a lot of work, and sometimes it’s about price and avoiding the hassle. So, turnkey homes that are well priced will still command a premium in many markets and see multiple offers, though the offers may not be comparable to the crazy $100,000-plus amounts during the early 2020s.
Sellers are having to readjust expectations after having little showing activity or fewer offers than anticipated. Some buyers are bowing out during the counteroffer process. Consumer sentiment is fragile right now, and buyers can find many reasons not to move forward. Sellers who don’t have to sell are frustrated, and some are taking their homes off the market or opting to rent them out instead.
Will there be any winners?
New construction has been the winner through all of this, as builders have been adjusting to a different market reality over the past few years and aggressively offering interest rate buydowns and other incentives to reduce the price and credit toward closing costs, that made it nearly impossible for a buyer to resist buying a brand new home. Those sellers with homes trying to compete against these kinds of communities are facing a challenging road ahead.
What the rest of this year will look like under Trump 2.0 with regard to real estate is anyone’s guess. While cutting waste, fraud and abuse and leveling the playing field with respect to tariffs all sound like great talking points, the reality is: Decisions have consequences. You can’t pull one lever or two or three without them affecting something else.
No one really knows which way the wind blows, and watching how the tariffs shake out is likely to impact a lot of what happens next in our industry. For some, opportunity will be created, but for others, they may be sidelined due to a lack of affordability and high interest rates. Stay tuned.
Cara Ameer is a bi-coastal agent licensed in California and Florida with Coldwell Banker. You can follow her on Facebook or on X, formerly known as Twitter.
