US President Donald Trump's latest executive order promises to lower mortgage costs for millions of Americans ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. However, questions remain over how much American homeowners could save and whether Trump's proposed measures will provide meaningful relief as housing affordability continues to deteriorate.
The order, titled Decreasing Housing Costs for the American People, aims to help eligible homebuyers stop paying mortgage insurance sooner while making it cheaper for homeowners to refinance their existing loans.
Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director Bill Pulte claimed on X on Thursday that “millions of Americans will save thousands and thousands of dollars.”
However, Keith Gumbinger, vice president of mortgage website HSH, cautioned that the financial impact remains difficult to determine without further implementation details, as per a report by CNBC.
US housing affordability worsens ahead of midterm elections
Donald Trump's announcement comes less than two weeks before the midterm elections, with rising living costs and housing affordability weighing on American households.
According to the Federal Reserve's latest Survey of Consumer Finances, published in early October, monthly repayments on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for a median-priced home accounted for approximately 33% of median family income in 2025, compared with 26% in 2022.
Notably, Trump's executive order did not slash mortgage interest rates. It aims to reduce mortgage insurance and refinancing costs instead
The average US 30-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 7.32% as of October 23.
Separately, rates fell from 7.40% to 7.32%, a decline of 0.08 percentage points, according to Freddie Mac's October 22 report. This was a market movement, not a cut mandated by Trump.
Who qualifies for Trump's mortgage insurance relief?
A central provision directs the FHFA to establish a pilot programme that proactively cancels mortgage insurance once eligible borrowers accumulate a specified level of home equity.
However, the programme would cover qualifying mortgages originated after its launch, meaning existing borrowers would not automatically benefit from the new cancellation process.
Conventional mortgage borrowers generally pay private mortgage insurance (PMI) when their down payment is below 20%.
Under existing rules, borrowers can typically request PMI cancellation when their outstanding loan balance reaches 80% of the property's original value. Automatic termination generally occurs at 78%, subject to applicable conditions.
According to Fannie Mae, annual PMI costs typically range between 0.2% and 2% of the loan amount.
For perspective, Freddie Mac's mortgage calculator estimates that purchasing a $600,000 property with a 10% down payment and a 7.3% mortgage rate could generate monthly insurance expenses of $351, equivalent to $4,212 annually.
The proposed changes could therefore deliver substantial savings to qualifying borrowers once they become eligible for cancellation.
Can homeowners save up to $1,500 on mortgage refinancing?
The executive order also seeks to make permanent an FHFA pilot programme allowing eligible refinancing transactions to proceed without traditional lender's title insurance, replacing it with less expensive alternatives.
Originally scheduled to run until November 2027, the programme was limited to certain states and refinancing transactions with loan-to-value ratios below 80%.
Former FHFA director Sandra Thompson estimated during an April 2024 congressional hearing that qualifying borrowers could save between $500 and $1,500 in closing costs.
However, refinancing activity remains subdued. Demand declined 59% in mid-October compared with the corresponding week last year, while the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 7.32% on October 23, according to Freddie Mac.
Will Trump's mortgage order deliver immediate savings?
Despite the Trump administration's projections, the proposals do not guarantee immediate financial relief for all existing homeowners.
The insurance cancellation pilot targets eligible future mortgages, while refinancing savings depend on borrowers meeting programme requirements.
Gumbinger also questioned whether reducing transaction expenses would substantially improve affordability while property prices and borrowing rates remain elevated.
The eventual benefits will depend on federal implementation, eligibility requirements and how many borrowers qualify for the proposed relief.
About the Author
Sayantani Biswas
Sayantani Biswas is an assistant editor at Livemint with seven years of experience covering geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations and global power dynamics. She reports on Indian and international politics, including elections worldwide, and specialises in historically grounded analysis of contemporary conflicts and state decisions. She joined Mint in 2021, after covering politics at publications including The Telegraph. <br> She holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (2019), with a specialisation in postcolonial Latin American literature. Her research examined economic nationalism through Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. She also writes on political language, cultural memory and the long shadows of conflict. <br> Biswas grew up in Durgapur, an industrial town in West Bengal shaped by migration, which drew families from across India to the Durgapur Steel Plant. As the only child in a joint family, she spent years listening—almost obsessively—to her grandparents’ testimonies of struggle, fear and loss as they fled Bangladesh during the Partition of 1947. This formative exposure to lived historical memory later converged with her training in Comparative Literature, equipping her to analyse socio-economic structures and their reverberations. <br> Outside the newsroom, she gravitates towards cultural history and critical theory, returning often to texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour and fairness, and believes political reporting demands not only clarity and speed, but historical depth, contextual precision, and a disciplined resistance to spectacle.