There’s an inherent tug-of-war in the housing market: First-time homebuyers are rooting for low prices that will let them get their foot in the door. But people who already own stand to benefit when their home values rise.

President Trump weighed in on the conundrum on Wednesday, saying he doesn’t want his housing affordability push to end up hurting homeowners.

“I am very protective of people that already own a house,” Trump said during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Every time you make it more and more and more affordable for somebody to buy a house cheaply, you're actually hurting the value of those houses, obviously, because the one thing works in tandem with the other.”

Trump’s comments about the housing market came during a wide-ranging address at Davos that touched on subjects as varied as the US’s ambitions in Greenland, drug prices, the war in Ukraine, energy policy, and the US economy.

Amid signs that consumers are growing more worried about affordability, including what it takes to buy a home in today’s market, Trump has unveiled multiple policy proposals that aim to make homebuying easier. Those efforts include a $200 billion mortgage bond-buying push and an executive order that seeks to ban large-scale investors from buying up more single-family homes.

Trump reiterated several of his recent proposals in his speech, calling institutional investor ownership of homes “not fair to the public.” He also highlighted how the bond-buying effort was designed to bring down interest rates.

Housing market economists have pointed out that Trump’s proposals aim to lower purchasing costs in an effort to stoke more housing demand, but it’s unlikely that major affordability gains will come without addressing the housing supply. Years of underbuilding after the financial crisis have left the US with a shortage of millions of homes.

Policies that would add additional housing supply are more likely to cause prices on existing homes to fall — a potential boon for first-time homebuyers who are priced out of today’s market, but a move that risks angering homeowners.

Trump insinuated that he’s considered such policies, but held off.

“If I want to really crush the housing market, I could do that so fast, and people could buy houses,” he said, “but you would destroy a lot of people that already have houses.”

Claire Boston is a Senior Reporter for Yahoo Finance covering housing, mortgages, and home insurance.

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