Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
President Donald Trump will unveil a plan next week that would allow Americans to withdraw funds from their 401(k) accounts to use for a home down payment.
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett announced the plan during an interview with Fox Business on Jan. 16, adding that the details of the proposal are still being finalized.
He said Trump will announce the final plan in Davos next week.
“The Fed lifted interest rates so much that mortgage rates went through the roof,” Hassett said.
He pointed out that the average monthly payment for a typical family buying a home has nearly doubled, and the down payment required had risen from about $15,000 to around $32,000 during the Biden administration.
Hassett stated that significant progress is needed to address the housing affordability problem, and the latest plan is one of many policies introduced by the president to help achieve this goal.
“We’re still talking about the mechanics of it,” he said.
Hassett explained that homeowners could put 10 percent of their home’s equity into a 401(k) plan, and as the home’s value goes up, the 401(k) would grow too. This approach, he said, could provide more funds for retirement, solve liquidity constraints, and make it easier to buy a house earlier in life.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has introduced a range of proposals to help more Americans achieve homeownership, including bringing down mortgage rates and banning large institutional investors from buying additional residential homes.
In a Jan. 8 Truth Social post, Trump directed the purchase of $200 billion in mortgage bonds to help reduce interest rates.
“This will drive Mortgage Rates down, monthly payments down, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable,” Trump wrote.
On Jan. 7, Trump also announced that he’s taking steps to bar large investors from purchasing more single-family homes, and said he would urge Congress to codify it.
Institutional investors are defined as companies owning 1,000 or more properties. Blackstone is considered the largest private-equity owner of U.S. apartments, with more than 230,000 units, according to data from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project as of April 2025.
Affordability of homeownership has become a growing concern, especially for first-time buyers.
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, housing costs rocketed, with median home prices rising 55 percent and rents surging more than 35 percent nationwide.
Borrowing costs also shot up in 2022 after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to combat inflation.
The American Dream is out of reach, especially for many young people. The typical age of first-time buyers climbed to 40 in 2025, the highest on record and up from 31 in 2014, according to a report by The Center for American Progress.
Andrew Moran and Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
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