Trump Uses Davos Speech to Brag That He Can “Crush” the Housing Market

Donald Trump said, during his remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, that he could crush the housing market if he wanted to.

“I am very protective of people that already own a house, of which we have millions and millions and millions. And because we have had such a good run, the house values have gone up tremendously, and these people have become wealthy. They weren’t wealthy,” Trump said. “They’ve become wealthy because of their house, and every time you make it more and more and more affordable for somebody to buy a house cheaply, you’re actually hurting the value of those houses obviously, because one thing works in tandem with the other.”

Trump went on to say that he could easily crush the housing market by making it easier to buy homes.

“Now if I want to really crush the housing market, I could do that so fast and people could buy houses. But you would destroy a lot of people that already have houses. In some cases, they’ve mortgaged their house and the mortgage would be very low, and all of a sudden the mortgage without any changes becomes very high and they end up losing the house,” Trump continued, adding that “we should be paying the lowest interest rate of any country in the world because without the United States we don’t have a country.”

Trump: "If I want to really crush the housing market, I could do that so fast, and people could buy houses ... I always say, look, you know I can crush the hell out of the market, we can drop interest rates to a level -- and that's one thing we do want to do." pic.twitter.com/olKbvgSfgJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 21, 2026

Trump’s alarming assessment of housing affordability shows that he still thinks like a landlord and property developer concerned about the value of his own assets. At a time when people are concerned about affordability in their lives, particularly when it comes to owning or renting a place to live, the president seems more concerned with people who already own property than those who are struggling.

In Trump’s own hometown, newly elected NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani was elected in a landslide on an agenda of freezing rent and making the city a more affordable place to live for everyone. It’s quite evident that Trump thinks doing that would “crush the housing market” and hurt the people who really matter to him: those wealthy enough to own a home already.