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1 million new starter homes built and sold under an affordable rent-to-own program. Wow, what an idea! Somebody should write that down.

But until they do, it’s just another dangled carrot. Let’s get after it.

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Homebuilders are making affordable housing sound patriotic! A coalition including Lennar Corp. is pitching a plan to develop up to 1 million homes branded as "Trump Homes," targeting first-time buyers who've spent the last five years watching Zillow like it's a horror movie. The proposal involves private investors financing the construction while tenants rent for three years, with monthly payments counting toward a down payment if they decide to buy.

The numbers are bonkers. We're talking over $250 billion in housing activity, which would be the most coordinated residential push since suburbs were invented. Entry-level inventory has been missing from the market for a decade, and builders finally realized they can't keep selling $600,000 "starter homes" to people making $75,000 a year. Only 17% of voters think now is a good time to buy, down from 69% in 2013. It doesn’t take a genius to see there’s a structural problem.

But there’s also a catch: FHFA Director Bill Pulte already told Fox Business the administration isn't actively looking at the proposal, though they're open to ideas. Translation: this “program” lives in PowerPoint for now. Details around financing, investor risk, and rent-to-own mechanics remain fuzzy enough to keep the lawyers employed for a while yet. Still, the fact that builders are pitching solutions this ambitious tells you exactly how desperate the push for affordability has become.

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The December JOLTS report dropped job openings to 6.5 million, the lowest level since September 2020 and roughly 1 million fewer than a year ago. Economists expected 7.2 million. They were off by a country mile. November's numbers were also revised down, because that’s just how we do things now.

The labor market has entered what economists politely call "low hire, low fire" mode. Hiring flatlined, but so have layoffs, for the most part. Nobody's getting axed, but nobody's getting hired either. Unemployment crept from 4% to 4.4% over 2025 without dramatic layoff headlines. The slow grind is doing the work that pink slips used to do.

The sector breakdown tells the story. Healthcare keeps carrying the economy (thanks, Boomers). Manufacturing, meanwhile, has shed jobs every month since March 2024. The Fed now has even more reason to stay patient on cuts while wage pressure fades and companies protect margins by freezing headcount instead of swinging. Quality balance sheets and pricing power start looking prettier when hiring freezes become the default corporate strategy… and, while the entirety of tech is chasing the AI ether, maybe a little bit of stagnation elsewhere is a good thing.

Elected officials have had a tremendous amount of success in the market recently.

We want to keep you updated on what they’re trading and when so you can leverage that intel as you plan out your own portfolio.

Data provided by AltIndex.

Remember to always DYOR.

That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.

Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake with Invested Inc.