The Claim

Achieved the lowest mortgage rates in three years by stabilizing mortgage-backed securities markets and expanding liquidity — driving monthly housing payments to their most affordable levels in over two years.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

Two factual claims and two causal claims. Factual: (1) mortgage rates reached their lowest level in three years, and (2) monthly housing payments reached their most affordable levels in over two years. Causal: (1) the administration “stabilized” mortgage-backed securities markets, and (2) it “expanded liquidity,” and these actions caused the rate decline.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That presidential action — not the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy or broader market forces — drove mortgage rates lower. The word “achieved” implies deliberate agency: the administration did something that produced this outcome. The claim implies the administration had both the tools and the strategy to move mortgage rates, and deployed them successfully.

What is conspicuously absent?

The Federal Reserve’s rate-cutting cycle. Between September 2024 and December 2025, the Fed cut the federal funds rate six times, totaling 175 basis points (from 5.25%-5.50% to 3.50%-3.75%). Three of those six cuts — including the initial 50 bps cut in September 2024 — occurred under the Biden administration. Mortgage rates track the 10-year Treasury yield (plus a spread), and the Treasury yield decline was driven primarily by the Fed’s easing cycle and slowing economic expectations. Also absent: the fact that “most affordable in over two years” means returning to early 2024 levels after a period where affordability cratered to multi-decade lows — the return to merely unaffordable rather than historically unaffordable is not an achievement in the conventional sense.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

Mortgage rates did reach their lowest level in more than three years in mid-January 2026. The Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey recorded a 30-year fixed rate of 6.06% for the week ending January 15, 2026 — the lowest since approximately September 15, 2022 (6.02%) and below the previous post-2022 low of 6.09% set on February 2, 2023. Freddie Mac’s own press release confirmed the rate was “its lowest level in more than three years.” The claim of “lowest mortgage rates in three years” is factually accurate. ¹

The decline in mortgage rates was overwhelmingly driven by the Federal Reserve’s rate-cutting cycle, not by administration action. The Fed cut rates six times between September 2024 and December 2025: 50 bps in September 2024, 25 bps in November 2024, 25 bps in December 2024, 25 bps in September 2025, 25 bps in October 2025, and 25 bps in December 2025 — a cumulative 175 bps. Three of the first three cuts (100 bps) occurred before Trump took office. Mortgage rates closely track the 10-year Treasury yield plus a spread. The 10-year yield declined from approximately 4.6% in early January 2025 to approximately 4.1% by December 2025, reflecting the Fed’s easing cycle and market expectations of further cuts. ²

The 30-year mortgage rate peaked at 7.04% in mid-January 2025 and declined 89 basis points to 6.15% by year-end 2025. The full 2025 PMMS dataset shows rates spent the first five months above 6.6%, began declining in earnest in August-September as the Fed resumed cutting, and reached their lowest level of 6.15% on December 31, 2025. The trajectory maps cleanly to Treasury yield movements and Fed rate expectations, not to any discrete administration policy action. ³

Housing affordability improved to its best level since early 2023. The NAR Housing Affordability Index rose to 106.2 in October 2025 — the third consecutive month above 100 and the highest since February 2023. The FRED Fixed Housing Affordability Index (FIXHAI) showed further improvement through early 2026: 107.1 (October 2025), 108.8 (November), 111.6 (December), 117.1 (January 2026), 117.6 (February 2026). The “most affordable levels in over two years” claim appears roughly supported — affordability in late 2025/early 2026 returned to levels last seen in early-to-mid 2023. ⁴

The administration did take one identifiable action on MBS markets: the January 8, 2026 directive for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities. President Trump directed FHFA Director Bill Pulte to have the GSEs buy their own MBS to drive down rates. The immediate market reaction compressed MBS-Treasury spreads by 10-15 basis points, and Mortgage News Daily rates briefly touched 5.99% the following day. However, this directive came just 12 days before the “365 Wins” publication on January 20, 2026. The $200B represents roughly 2% of the $9-11 trillion MBS market. The longer-term effectiveness is debated by analysts. ⁵

Strong Inferences

The January 8 MBS directive cannot explain the 2025 rate decline that preceded it by months. Mortgage rates fell from 7.04% (January 16, 2025) to 6.15% (December 31, 2025) — an 89 basis point decline — entirely before the $200B MBS purchase directive was issued on January 8, 2026. The additional decline from 6.15% to 6.06% (January 15, 2026) may have been partially influenced by the directive (via MBS spread compression), but the vast majority of the rate decline occurred over a 12-month period driven by Fed policy and Treasury yield movements. The phrase “stabilizing mortgage-backed securities markets and expanding liquidity” most plausibly refers to this directive, but it was issued after most of the rate decline had already occurred. ⁶

Housing remains unaffordable by standard metrics despite the improvement. NAHB data for Q4 2025 shows a family earning the national median income of $104,200 needed 34% of its income for a median-priced home — still above the standard 30% affordability threshold. Of 175 metro areas analyzed, 77 (44%) remained cost-burdened or severely cost-burdened. The median monthly mortgage payment was $2,089 in October 2025. The “most affordable in two years” framing describes a return toward the unaffordable baseline of 2023, not a return to genuine affordability. NAHB’s own headline: “Affordability Posts Mild Gains in Second Half of 2025 but Crisis Continues.” ⁷

The Fed’s rate-cutting cycle that drove mortgage rate declines began under the Biden administration. The initial 50 bps cut (September 2024) and two subsequent 25 bps cuts (November and December 2024) occurred before Trump took office on January 20, 2025. These three cuts totaling 100 bps shifted market expectations and began the Treasury yield decline that would pull mortgage rates lower throughout 2025. The Trump-era Fed cuts (three cuts totaling 75 bps in September, October, and December 2025) continued this trajectory but did not initiate it. The Fed held rates steady at five of its eight 2025 meetings (January, March, May, June, and July). ⁸

What the Evidence Shows

The statistical claims in this item are substantially accurate. Mortgage rates did hit their lowest level in more than three years (6.06% on January 15, 2026), and housing affordability did improve to levels not seen since early 2023, making the “most affordable in over two years” claim roughly correct. Unlike many of the economic claims in this section, the underlying numbers check out.

The problem is the causal story. The claim that the administration “achieved” this outcome “by stabilizing mortgage-backed securities markets and expanding liquidity” reverses the actual causal chain. Mortgage rates declined throughout 2025 because the Federal Reserve was cutting interest rates — six cuts totaling 175 bps in a cycle that began in September 2024 under the Biden administration — and because 10-year Treasury yields fell in response. The 30-year fixed rate dropped from 7.04% in mid-January 2025 to 6.15% by year-end, tracking the Treasury yield decline almost exactly. None of this required or reflected any presidential action.

The one identifiable administration policy — the January 8, 2026 directive for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy $200 billion in MBS — came 12 days before this claim was published and after the vast majority of the 2025 rate decline had already occurred. The directive did compress MBS spreads by 10-15 basis points in the days following, and the 6.06% low on January 15 may reflect some contribution from this action. But attributing a year-long, market-driven rate decline to a directive issued in the final two weeks is a textbook case of claiming credit for a trend already in motion.

The “most affordable in two years” framing is also worth unpacking. Affordability cratered in 2023-2024 to its worst levels in decades as rates surged above 7%. The return to early-2023 levels represents a partial recovery from an affordability crisis, not a new era of affordability. Housing remains unaffordable by the standard 30%-of-income threshold, and NAHB characterized the situation as a continuing “crisis” even as it acknowledged the gains.

The Bottom Line

The factual claims are mostly accurate: rates did hit a three-year low, and affordability did improve to levels last seen in early 2023. This is one of the more grounded claims in the economic section. But the causal attribution is backwards. Mortgage rates declined because the Federal Reserve cut rates 175 basis points between September 2024 and December 2025 — a cycle that started under Biden and continued under an independent Fed. The administration’s one concrete MBS market intervention (the $200B GSE purchase directive) came just 12 days before publication, after months of rate declines already in the books. “Achieved” and “by stabilizing” imply presidential agency where the actual driver was monetary policy conducted by an independent central bank. The claim takes a real, welcome trend and misattributes it.

Steel-man: Mortgage rates genuinely did fall to a three-year low, and affordability genuinely improved. These are real developments that helped real homebuyers. The January 8 MBS directive was a concrete policy action that did compress spreads, and if the $200B in purchases is executed over time, it may contribute to keeping rates lower than they would otherwise be. The administration also argues — with some validity — that its broader policy direction (fiscal restraint, energy production) contributed to the inflation decline that enabled the Fed to cut. This indirect influence is plausible but diffuse, and no economist attributes the bulk of the mortgage rate decline to fiscal or energy policy.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, week ending January 15, 2026. Press release: “The Average 30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgage Hits Lowest Level in Over Three Years.” https://freddiemac.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/average-30-year-fixed-rate-mortgage-hits-lowest-level-over-three; PMMS Archive 2023: https://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/archive?year=2023 (February 2, 2023 rate: 6.09%); PMMS Archive 2022: https://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/archive?year=2022 (September 15, 2022 rate: 6.02%). ↩

2. Federal Reserve FOMC Statements, September 2024 through December 2025. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm; FRED Series MORTGAGE30US: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US; Fannie Mae, “What Determines the Rate on a 30-Year Mortgage?”: https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/publications/housing-insights/rate-30-year-mortgage ↩

3. Freddie Mac PMMS Archive 2025, weekly data January 2 through December 31. https://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/archive?year=2025 ↩

4. NAR Housing Affordability Index, October 2025 data. https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/latest-housing-affordability-index-data-graphs; FRED Series FIXHAI: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FIXHAI ↩

5. NAR Washington Report, “President Trump Directs MBS Purchases to Lower Mortgage Rates.” https://www.nar.realtor/washington-report/president-trump-directs-mbs-purchases-to-lower-mortgage-rates; White House Fact Sheet, January 20, 2026: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-stops-wall-street-from-competing-with-main-street-homebuyers/; CNBC, January 8, 2026: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/08/trump-mortgage-bonds-rates-fannie-freddie.html ↩

6. PMMS 2025 weekly data (footnote 3) compared to MBS directive timeline (footnote 5). Rate declined 89 bps (7.04% to 6.15%) before directive; additional 9 bps decline (6.15% to 6.06%) after directive. ↩

7. NAHB, “Affordability Posts Mild Gains in Second Half of 2025 but Crisis Continues,” March 2026. https://www.nahb.org/news-and-economics/press-releases/2026/03/affordability-posts-mild-gains-in-second-half-of-2025-but-crisis-continues; NAR Housing Affordability Index (footnote 4). ↩

8. Federal Reserve FOMC Statements: September 17-18, 2024 (cut 50 bps to 4.75%-5.00%); November 6-7, 2024 (cut 25 bps to 4.50%-4.75%); December 17-18, 2024 (cut 25 bps to 4.25%-4.50%). https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm ↩