The American housing market faces a reckoning. New home sales in May 2025 dropped 13.7% from April to 623,000 units, and are 6.3% below May 2024 levels. Existing home sales remain sluggish at 4.03 million, with mortgage rates persistently high. Meanwhile, home prices keep climbing. This represents managed decline disguised as market forces.
The real cost extends beyond monthly payments—it’s sovereignty itself.
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The Setup: Political Theater Dressed as Reform
President Trump announced he’s “giving very serious consideration to bringing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public”, describing them as “doing very well, throwing off a lot of CASH, and the time would seem to be right”. The language sounds promising: reform, realignment, market efficiency.
The substance tells a different story.
True privatization means open markets where merit determines access. What we’re seeing instead resembles a reshuffling of control among politically connected investors. Bill Ackman’s hedge fund Pershing Square holds over 115 million shares of Fannie worth more than $1.2 billion, while his plan “pays lip service to curtailing the benefits enjoyed by the GSEs, but the details leave most of them untouched”.
Experts warn privatization could push mortgage rates higher, as investors would demand higher returns without government backing. Mark Zandi estimates privatization could cost the typical American taking out a new mortgage between $1,800 and $2,800 per year. The cost appears to be quiet foreclosure on ownership itself for an entire generation.
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The Illusion: Crypto as Credit Theater
The Federal Housing Finance Agency just ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to formally consider cryptocurrency as an asset in single-family mortgage loan risk assessments. FHFA Director William Pulte signed the directive, stating it aligns with President Trump’s vision “to make the United States the crypto capital of the world”.
Advocates call it progressive. The informed call it what it is: volatility masquerading as stability.
Public records show that as of January 2025, Pulte’s spouse owned between $500,000 and $1 million of bitcoin and a similar amount of Solana’s SOL token. This represents policy-making with clear conflicts of interest where personal holdings influence housing finance for millions.
The directive restricts consideration to digital assets stored on U.S.-regulated, centralized exchanges and requires adjustments for crypto’s market volatility. A broken system contorts itself to maintain the illusion of access while hiding structural rot underneath. Families need affordable pathways to ownership, while getting gimmicks that look innovative on paper and implode in practice.
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The Standout: Florida Reframes the Fight
Where Washington engineers dependency, Florida asks constitutional questions.
Governor Ron DeSantis announced a proposal to deliver immediate property tax relief to Florida homeowners: a rebate averaging $1,000 for each homesteaded property in the state, to be issued in December 2025. The rebates would cover state-mandated school property taxes while ensuring full school district funding.
This represents more than tax relief—it’s a signal. “Property taxes effectively require homeowners to pay rent to the government,” DeSantis said. He called property tax collection “an anomaly” and critiqued the practice as invasive of private property ownership, saying “You effectively are wards of the local government”.
The proposal would benefit over 5.1 million homesteaded properties across Florida and marks a major step toward the Governor’s long-term goal of eliminating property taxes through a future constitutional amendment. While Washington manipulates access through crypto qualifications and interest-rate games, Florida challenges the fundamental premise: ownership should include the right to keep what you’ve earned.
DeSantis emphasized his “Florida-First” ideology, saying “I don’t want to give Canadians a tax cut” in reference to sales tax relief that would benefit tourists. The approach puts the citizen first, strips bureaucracy back, and offers a model for what governance looks like when rooted in principle rather than preservation of political machinery.
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Conclusion: Reclaim What Ownership Means
Owning a home in America has become a performance where you remain compliant with the system rather than sovereign within it. From crypto qualifications to interest-rate manipulation, the levers of access connect to politics rather than merit or production.
Florida offers the counterexample. The approach puts the homeowner’s autonomy back at the center and shows every conservative leader what functional governance looks like. It challenges the idea that ownership requires annual tribute to the state.
With home sales posting their slowest May in 16 years amid economic uncertainty, Americans deserve better than managed decline disguised as innovation. The American home should function as the clearest reflection of earned independence—a foundation for building wealth rather than collateral for political currency.
Florida shows the path forward. The rest of the country should be watching.
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Sandra McCall is a contributor to Wealth Creation Investing, where she delivers sharp, unapologetic commentary on economic freedom, market accountability, and leadership performance. Her work challenges centralized overreach and defends the foundational principles of free enterprise with clarity, consequence, and unwavering commitment to constitutional governance.