The president's latest executive order aimed at housing reform is being celebrated by experts for saving buyers money—but how much?
Last month, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at housing affordability.
The multipart order runs the gamut, touching on everything from manufactured housing to permitting to direct the Departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs to reduce interest rates on their direct single-family loan programs to adjusting closing cost fees paid by certain homeowners.
The latter has lenders and buyers buzzing, as a cut to closing costs could mean the difference of thousands of dollars when it comes to down payments.
But while the math works out for some, it’s important to recognize some of the serious caveats as well.
Breaking down the math
Trump’s order includes several different regulations: one targeting mortgage insurance and another lender's title insurance for low-risk refinancing loans.
The latest down payment report from Realtor.com® shows that the national median down payment in the second quarter of 2026 climbed to $27,100, or 13.7% of the typical purchase price, up from 12.9% at the start of the year. On an annual basis, however, the typical down payment fell from 14.3% year over year, recording the lowest second-quarter level since 2021
Homebuyers who pay less than a 20% down payment are required to buy mortgage insurance for their home loans.
There are two types of mortgage insurance: private and government. If you have a government-backed loan, such as an FHA loan, which allows buyers to put down as little as 3.5%, you pay mortgage insurance to the government. If your loan is not government-backed, you pay private mortgage insurance to your lender.
Trump’s order establishes a pilot program under which the Federal Housing Finance Agency would identify and automatically cancel mortgage insurance for loans that meet cancellation criteria, like necessary equity requirements.
However, the program applies only to new home loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—aka the government-sponsored loans.
The reason for this insurance is to protect the lender if you fall behind on payments, typically costing between 0.46% and 1.5% of the loan each year based on your credit score. That easily tacks on hundreds of dollars to your monthly bill.
For example, a 1% rate on a $450,000 loan adds $375 straight to your monthly payment. That’s a savings of $4,500 a year, if eliminated.
The executive order also aims to reduce mortgage refinancing costs by making permanent the FHFA’s pilot program that waives the lender’s title insurance policy and allows “cost-friendly alternatives,” according to the White House.
“This is a massive win for American homeowners. We’re talking about reforms that could cut refinancing costs by nearly $2,400 on an illustrative $500,000 loan, as well as a new pilot that would proactively cancel mortgage insurance once appropriate equity thresholds have been met. That’s real money,” says Brendan McKay, Broker Action Coalition’s chief advocacy officer.
(Realtor.com) The trade-off
The biggest drawback of this initiative is that the pilot program applies only to new mortgages originated after the program launches.
This means current homeowners paying mortgage insurance won’t benefit from this change under the current draft.
On the flip side, the title insurance waiver pilot applies only to low-risk refinances, not new purchases. First-time homebuyers cannot use this waiver to lower their closing costs or free up down payment cash.
Additionally, the program is currently limited to certain refinance loans with loan-to-value ratios of less than 80% in specific geographic areas.
The order also expands a pilot program from 2024 that allows homeowners to skip lender’s title insurance on certain low-risk refinances, potentially saving $500 to $1,500 in closing costs. The move echoes previous efforts to rein in closing fees—which hit a median of $6,000 in 2022—though the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has gone silent after the Trump administration scaled back its operations.
This element of the executive order has industry leaders urging caution.
Seller impersonation fraud attempts doubled from 2024 to 2025, hitting 59% of surveyed title firms, according to the American Land Title Association. Fraud and forgery now account for over 40% of title insurance losses on refinances. When you remove title insurance, you shift this growing fraud risk directly onto the homeowner and the lender.
ALTA’s CEO Chris Morton says that efforts to improve housing affordability are "critical," but warned that any effort to bring title insurance costs down "must also preserve the essential consumer safeguards” that protect Americans' most valuable assets.
"Fraud is unaffordable, and the threats facing homeowners are growing," says Morton. "Now more than ever, we need to ensure that efforts to lower housing costs do not shift significant financial risks onto American families or the broader housing finance system."