On September 15, Gavin Newsom’s X account posted a chart of U.S. home prices with a two-word caption: “Great work, @realDonaldTrump!” The chart shows prices at a record high. It also shows when they got there. The steep part of the line, the part that turned a $355,000 median new home into a $430,000 one, runs from early 2021 to early 2025, and within hours the replies were doing the governor’s arithmetic for him.
Where This Stands Right Now
- Newsom’s post, aimed at Trump, drew a wave of responses pointing out that the sharpest climb on his own chart happened during the Biden administration.
- FactCheck.org’s numbers: the median new-home price rose from about $354,800 in January 2021 to $429,600 in January 2025; the median existing-home price in 2024 was roughly 37 percent above 2020.
- A Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas study attributes about 30 percent of 2021–2024 home-price growth to the surge in unauthorized immigration.
- Mortgage rates, not just sale prices, drove the affordability collapse: the 30-year rate went from under 3 percent in 2021 to above 7 percent by late 2023.
What The Chart Actually Shows
Home prices have risen under both presidents; that is the honest reading of any long price series. But a chart is a picture of when. The line that Newsom posted is relatively flat through 2019, bends upward in 2020, and then goes nearly vertical for the four years that Joe Biden was in office, before flattening again. Politifact, examining the claim that prices “doubled” under Biden, found that whether that is true depends on whether you count the mortgage payment along with the sale price; either way, every major gauge rose during those years. That is the period Newsom’s caption invited people to look at, and they did.
So should Gavin Newsom be blaming housing prices in Trump?
— Dan (@grownupdan) September 16, 2026
Why The Spike Landed Where It Did
Three things happened at once after January 2021. Inflation pushed the Federal Reserve into the fastest rate-hiking cycle in forty years, which took the 30-year mortgage from under 3 percent to more than 7 and roughly doubled the monthly payment on the same house. Building never caught up with demand, with zoning, permitting and labor shortages holding supply down in exactly the metros where people wanted to live. And, according to the Dallas Fed’s economists, a one percent rise in unauthorized workers in a local labor force lifted home prices by about 2.2 percent and rents by about 1.4 percent, enough to account for roughly a third of the 2021–2024 increase. None of those is a Trump policy. The one Newsom governs, California’s housing supply, is the tightest in the country.
The Governor’s Problem At Home
The reason the post stung is that California is the case study. The state has the highest median home price of any large state and has lost population to Texas, Arizona and Nevada for most of Newsom’s tenure, with housing costs the reason most movers give. A governor who has spent seven years promising to fix that, and who is openly positioning for 2028, posted a national price chart to blame a president who has been in office eight months, and the chart’s own timeline handed the argument to his critics.
What Happens Next
Home prices are a midterm issue for both parties, and this exchange previews how it will be fought: Democrats will point to the level, Republicans will point to the slope. Watch the next Case-Shiller and existing-home releases for whether prices are flattening under the Fed’s current rate path, and watch whether Newsom keeps posting charts. The last one did more for the other side.
Sources:
townhall.com, factcheck.org, newsweek.com, republicanpolicy.house.gov
