Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) are U.S. government‑sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that buy mortgages from lenders, bundle them into mortgage‑backed securities (MBS), and guarantee investors will be paid even if some borrowers default. This “secondary market” role lets lenders free up cash to make more home loans and helps keep 30‑year fixed‑rate mortgages widely available and relatively affordable.
When a public authority orders or facilitates large additional purchases of agency MBS (the kind guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), it boosts demand for those securities. Higher demand raises MBS prices and lowers their yields. Because mortgage rates are largely set by the yield investors require on MBS (plus a markup for lender costs and profit), lower required yields on MBS translate into lower interest rates offered to borrowers. The Federal Reserve’s large‑scale MBS purchase programs during and after the 2008 crisis and in 2020–21 are widely credited with compressing MBS spreads and contributing to historically low mortgage rates, illustrating the channel through which a $200 billion MBS‑purchase program could push mortgage rates down.
Mortgage‑backed securities (MBS) are investment products created by pooling many individual home loans and turning the cash flows (borrowers’ monthly principal and interest payments) into bond‑like securities that can be bought and sold. Banks or lenders originate mortgages, then sell them to entities like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, or private issuers, which bundle similar loans and issue MBS; investors in the MBS receive the mortgage payments instead of the original lender.
MBS affect borrowing costs and the housing market by linking mortgage rates to global capital markets: • Liquidity and availability: By letting lenders sell loans and recycle the cash into new mortgages, MBS increase the supply of mortgage credit and support the widespread availability of long‑term fixed‑rate loans. • Pricing of mortgage rates: Mortgage rates are set so that the resulting MBS will offer a yield attractive to investors relative to benchmarks like the 10‑year U.S. Treasury. When investor demand for MBS is strong (for example, because of central bank buying or a global “flight to safety”), MBS prices rise and required yields fall, which allows lenders to offer lower mortgage rates. When demand weakens or investors perceive higher risk, they require higher yields, which raises mortgage rates. • Housing activity: Lower mortgage rates generally boost homebuying and refinancing, increasing housing demand and home prices; higher mortgage rates cool demand, dampening price growth and construction.
“Large institutional investors” in single‑family housing generally refers to corporations, private‑equity funds, and real‑estate investment trusts (REITs) that own portfolios of hundreds or thousands of homes as rentals. Research finds they own only a small share of total U.S. single‑family homes nationally (roughly 1–3%), but can control a sizable share of rentals in some metro areas and neighborhoods, contributing to higher rents and prices there.
If such investors were banned from buying additional single‑family homes: • Supply available to individual buyers: In affected markets, fewer homes would be bought by large investors, so more listed properties could remain available to would‑be owner‑occupiers. Over time this could modestly increase the share of homes owned by households rather than corporations, especially in places where institutional buyers have been very active. • Prices and rents: With one class of deep‑pocketed buyers removed, bidding pressure on some starter‑ and mid‑priced homes could lessen, putting mild downward pressure on purchase prices in areas where these investors are currently aggressive. Some studies and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) note that institutional investor activity has been associated with faster home‑price and rent increases in certain markets; limiting that activity could therefore slow local price and rent growth, though the overall national effect would likely be small because their market share is low and the primary constraint is the limited construction of new homes. • Who would enforce a federal ban: A national ban would have to be created by Congress or via federal rulemaking and enforced through existing regulators and agencies. Likely enforcers would include housing and financial regulators (for example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, bank regulators for supervised lenders) and possibly the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission for corporate‑compliance and anti‑evasion rules. State and local governments could also adopt complementary restrictions through zoning, landlord‑licensing, or registration requirements.
Because no such nationwide ban currently exists, the precise impact and enforcement structure remain speculative; existing analysis only covers the effects of institutional investors’ presence, not of a full prohibition.
GasBuddy is a private company that runs a website and mobile app where users report current fuel prices at specific gas stations. The company’s own help materials and independent descriptions state that the vast majority of its price data are crowdsourced: drivers manually submit prices they see at the pump, and other users can confirm or correct them. GasBuddy also collects some data directly from station operators and partners, and academic datasets built from GasBuddy show extensive station‑level coverage across the U.S.
Because millions of price reports are submitted daily and prices change frequently, GasBuddy’s averages generally track national and regional trends well, especially in densely populated areas with many active users. However, coverage can be thinner and updates less frequent in rural or low‑traffic areas, and individual station entries can be temporarily inaccurate until refreshed. For official national statistics, analysts usually rely on government sources such as the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), but GasBuddy is widely used by media and researchers for timely, fine‑grained price information.
The article’s claim that motorists will spend about $11 billion less on gasoline in 2026 than in 2025 appears to mirror how GasBuddy has produced prior year‑ahead savings estimates, but there is no public, detailed 2026 model available as of now. In its 2024 Fuel Price Outlook, GasBuddy forecast the national average price per gallon for the coming year, combined that with expected fuel‑consumption volumes, and compared the result with the previous year to estimate that Americans would spend tens of billions of dollars less on fuel; CNN and other outlets reported these figures as GasBuddy’s projections.
By analogy, the $11 billion figure is likely based on GasBuddy (or a similar fuel‑price forecaster) projecting a lower average retail gasoline price for 2026 than for 2025, multiplying by forecast gallons consumed, and subtracting the two annual spending totals. However, without a published 2026 outlook from GasBuddy or another named forecaster, the specific assumptions—such as crude oil price paths, refining margins, demand growth, and tax changes—cannot be independently verified from available information.
Independent economists and non‑governmental analyses generally do not attribute recent declines in gasoline prices or mortgage rates primarily to any single administration’s policies. Instead, they emphasize broader market and macroeconomic forces:
Gasoline prices • The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) explains that retail gasoline prices are driven mainly by global crude‑oil prices, plus refining costs, distribution/marketing, and taxes. Changes in world oil supply and demand, OPEC+ decisions, geopolitical events, refinery capacity, and seasonal demand typically dominate short‑term movements at the pump. • Recent periods of falling U.S. gas prices have been linked in EIA and independent commentary to easing global crude prices, recovering refinery capacity after outages, and moderating demand, rather than to specific domestic policy changes alone.
Mortgage rates • Research by Fannie Mae and others finds that 30‑year mortgage rates primarily follow the yield on the 10‑year U.S. Treasury note plus a spread reflecting mortgage‑market risk and lender costs. Those Treasury yields move with expectations for Federal Reserve policy, inflation, growth, and global demand for safe assets. • Studies of the Federal Reserve’s large‑scale purchases of agency MBS (for example, during and after the 2008 crisis and in 2020–21) conclude that central‑bank MBS buying narrowed MBS spreads and helped lower mortgage rates. This effect is attributed to monetary policy, not to White House housing initiatives.
While specific executive‑branch actions—such as targeted releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, regulatory decisions affecting drilling or pipelines, housing‑finance regulations, or subsidies—can have some influence at the margin or in particular segments, the consensus in independent data and research is that the main drivers of recent gas‑price and mortgage‑rate declines are global energy‑market conditions and the broader interest‑rate environment set by monetary policy, rather than the administration’s announced gas or housing policies.