Trump’s first broken promise will be 3% mortgage rates: Election 2024

In many ways, Donald Trump was elected to a second presidency as part of a cost-of-living backlash, with unaffordable housing at the center of Americans’ frustration. High house prices and the highest mortgage interest rates since the financial crisis meant that a full third of the country was effectively locked out of the home ownership dream. That, in turn, helped explain why Americans gave the economy such low marks in consumer sentiment surveys and political polls, even as official inflation statistics cooled and the stock market boomed along with gross domestic product.

The early signs from the mortgage and bond markets are not encouraging on that front. Trump will have to dramatically moderate his agenda if he wants to meet voters’ expectations, and even then his pledge to drive mortgage rates down to 3% or lower seems well out of reach in the absence of a sharp economic downturn.