Home Prices Reach Highest Level In American History As Trump Declares 'Unimportance' Of Affordability Bill

US home prices have reached a record high as President Donald Trump has continued to downplay a bipartisan housing affordability bill awaiting enactment.

The median price of an existing US home climbed to £329,000 ($440,660) in June, an all-time record, just as President Donald Trump dismissed the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act as 'so unimportant' and 'a yawn' compared with his stalled voter identification bill. His refusal to sign the affordability package culminated on Friday, 10 July, when he announced he would let it become law without his signature 'in protest' over the Senate's failure to pass the SAVE America Act.

The collision of record housing costs and presidential indifference has handed Democrats a ready-made midterm attack line on the issue voters rank among their biggest financial worries.

NAR June Report Confirms A 36-Month Climb To Record Prices

The National Association of Realtors reported that the median existing-home price rose 1.8% year on year in June, up from £323,000 ($432,700) twelve months earlier. Prices have now increased for 36 consecutive months, even as sales slipped 2.4% over the same period.

The regional breakdown shows how uneven the pain is. Median single-family prices reached £473,000 ($633,600) in the West and £421,600 ($564,800) in the Northeast, against £258,700 ($346,600) in the Midwest. Redfin analysis found households now need an annual income of roughly £87,300 ($117,000) to afford the average American home.

Economists see little relief ahead. 'Housing affordability remains low under slowing wage growth and stronger home price growth,' Ershang Liang of PNC Economics Research said in a note on the figures. The only sustained fall in the modern era came during the crash that fed the 2008 financial crisis, and pandemic-era interest rate cuts have since pushed values sharply higher.

Trump Calls Bipartisan Housing Package 'A Yawn' In Oval Office Remarks

The ROAD to Housing Act, the product of months of negotiation between Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren, cleared the Senate 85 to 5 on 22 June and the House 358 to 32 a day later, a rare bipartisan feat in a bitterly divided Congress. Trump was due to sign it at a Capitol ceremony on 24 June, but then abruptly cancelled, announcing he would withhold his signature until lawmakers passed the SAVE America Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Pressed by reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, 29 June, the president did not soften. 'It's so unimportant compared to the SAVE America Act,' Trump said before adding that compared to his elections bill, 'just about everything is a big yawn'. He conceded in the same exchange that the SAVE America Act is 'probably not going to happen' because four or five Republican senators refuse to back it.

The remarks jarred with his own administration's affordability messaging in a midterm year. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who spent days at the White House lobbying for the package, told Fox News that even without a signature, 'it's still law' and Republicans would celebrate it regardless.

The dismissal also sits awkwardly beside the president's own record on the subject. At a Cabinet meeting in January 2026, Trump said of housing values that 'we're going to keep those prices up', arguing homeowners' equity should not be sacrificed, a stance critics say helps explain his coolness towards a supply-boosting bill.

Johnson's prediction proved correct. On Friday 10 July, Trump posted on social media that he would not sign the bill 'in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT'. Under the Constitution, a bill presented to the president becomes law automatically after ten days, excluding Sundays, if he neither signs nor vetoes it while Congress remains in session.

The law is the broadest federal housing intervention in decades. Its provisions restrict institutional investors from buying up single-family homes, ease regulatory barriers to construction, expand manufactured housing and create a pilot programme to make mortgages under £74,700 ($100,000) viable for lenders, according to a summary of the legislation. White House economists have previously estimated a national shortage of around ten million homes.

Affordability Crisis Squeezes First-Time Buyers Out Of The Market

The record prices land hardest on those trying to get a first foothold. Fewer than four in ten non-homeowner households can afford a typical starter home, according to LendingTree data cited in the CBS report, and entry-level properties in several US cities now carry seven-figure price tags.

Housing costs rank among Americans' top personal financial concerns in recent Gallup polling, and the president has now attached his name, loudly and on the record, to the proposition that the biggest housing reform in a generation does not much matter.

The legislation is expected to become law even without Trump's signature, as record home prices continue to weigh on prospective buyers.