Home shoppers waiting for significantly lower mortgage rates this year may be disappointed, even if the next Federal Reserve chair wants to lower interest rates.

Last week President Donald Trump nominated a new chair for the US Federal Reserve. If confirmed, Kevin Warsh would take the role once current Chair Jerome Powell’s term ends in May.

Trump has said loudly and often that he wants lower interest rates, and Warsh’s recent views have suggested he too sees room for the Fed to cut rates, even as Powell last week said the central bank is on pause as it continues its fight against inflation.

After falling nearly a full percentage point from early-2025 highs, mortgage rates remain above 6%, making already-expensive homes even less affordable for Americans. Trump has said improving affordability will be a central focus of his economic agenda heading into the 2026 midterm elections.

But even if the Fed lowers interest rates and affordability improves at the margins, home borrowing rates may not drop much further this year, economists say.

Mortgage rates are affected by more than the Fed’s decisions. Those rates largely track the 10-year US Treasury yield, which rises and falls for a host of economic reasons. The sales price of homes can be affected by housing supply, the amount of demand in the market and state and local government rules, among other factors.

“The mortgage market is very complex,” said Charlie Dougherty, a senior economist at Wells Fargo. “Yes, the Fed plays a role, but the root causes of mortgage rates being elevated are inflation, prospects for growth and fiscal pressures.”

Sometimes mortgage rates don’t even follow the Fed policy. For example, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage jumped higher after the Fed cut interest rates in September 2024.

Last month, Trump announced a strategy to lower mortgage rates directly: He instructed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-owned mortgage giants, in a social media post to purchase $200 billion in mortgage bonds.

In a statement, Federal Housing Finance Agency spokesman Jonathan Coppage told CNN that the purchases have begun and “have had great market reception.” (The FHFA oversees the operations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.)

Several economists told CNN that while such an intervention may temporarily keep rates lower, it is unlikely to offset the broader forces over the long term.

Wells Fargo expects the 10-year US Treasury yield to ease slightly in the first few months of this year before climbing again in 2027 — a shift that could eventually push mortgage rates higher. Dougherty said the mortgage bond purchases and Warsh’s nomination don’t change the bank’s long-term outlook.

Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist, said this month’s government shutdown could make it harder for the Fed to cut rates soon, since key economic data that guide the central bank - and the bond market - may be postponed.

But the main driver of housing unaffordability is a lack of homes for sale where people want to live, such as cities and areas with more jobs, Fairweather said.

Trump signed an executive order last month banning large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. But he hasn’t announced a fuller plan to increase housing supply.

And Trump has signaled that he doesn’t want to see home prices fall too far, because he is concerned about cutting into the wealth of existing homeowners.

“People that own their homes, we’re going to keep them wealthy. We’re going to keep those prices up,” he said at a Thursday Cabinet meeting. “We’re not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody that didn’t work that hard could buy a home.”

“We’re going to make it easier to buy, we’re going to get interest rates down, but I want to protect the people that for the first time in their lives feel good about themselves, they feel like they’re wealthy people,” he added.

Still, despite mortgage rates above 6% and near-record-high home prices, the housing market is showing signs of thawing.

Mortgage applications jumped for most of January, indicating that more buyers are stepping off the sidelines, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

And more home sellers are now accepting that 6% rates are the norm. People who once hesitated to give up ultra-low mortgages secured before the 2022 inflation surge are increasingly willing to list their homes for sale now, said Brad Case, the chief residential economist at Homes.com.

Affordability is improving modestly in some markets, driven not by falling interest rates or more housing supply but instead by slower home price growth and rising incomes, Case said.

“Income growth has increased. That’s sort of the one thing that’s going to pull us out of this affordability problem without seeing house prices go down,” Case said. “When I look at the overall market, what I see is that we are normalizing.”

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