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JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, is a name typically attached to big numbers. But a new plan to invest $750 billion into housing market initiatives in the next decade stands out.
The bank announced this summer it would deploy $750 billion into the housing market through 2035. Its “American Dream Initiative” aims to build or preserve 1 million affordable housing units and help 500,000 customers purchase homes, 200,000 of them for the first time.
It’s not alone. Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Bank of America—which, with JPMorgan, comprise the “big four” of American finance—have each announced major housing initiatives. And, like the $5 trillion JPMorgan Chase, they’re directing tens of billions toward the problem.
The nationwide housing supply shortage, as well as rampant pessimism among young people, make the issue too big to ignore, says Sam Sheets, a strategy executive for Community & Affordable Lending at JPMorgan Chase.
“At the end of the day, it’s a function of supply and demand,” Sheets says. “Supply is the big issue—and supply of homes at the right price point.”
Housing has long been a major focus for banks. Bank of America, for instance, has provided $15 billion in loans and grants since 2019 to support down payments, closing costs, and affordable mortgage options for homebuyers. It partners with 300 housing counseling groups in the process.
But banks are now also expanding their support for efforts like zoning reform, building code changes, and new homebuilding in an effort to restore affordability to the housing market—and potentially expand the pool of mortgage borrowers, which has been shrinking lately.
“It’s driven by slower new construction but also just a lock-in effect, which has forced families to stay put when they would have moved and upsized,” Sheets says.
The business case for bank intervention
Reading between the lines, banks may be concerned about the decline in mortgage business in recent years.
The number of annual new mortgage accounts at large banks has hovered below 500,000 for the past three years, well below the million-plus levels typically seen in a single year before the pandemic, according to tracking from the Philadelphia Fed.
The sharp drop-off in big bank mortgages is due in part to increased competition from specialty lenders, but the main culprit may be the overall decline in homebuying activity since 2022.
Bernard Nossuli, COO at lending data company iEmergent, notes the mortgage business has been racked by the uncertain market, including high interest rates and limited signals from the Federal Reserve about when that might change.
Roughly 581,000 home purchase loans were originated from January through March 2026, down 19% from the previous quarter and a 12-year low. With many younger buyers priced out, and older buyers “locked in” to homes with low rates, supply-side solutions seem to be the easiest lever to pull right now.
But while those policies might seem straightforward, “the reality is a lot more complicated than that,” Nossuli says.
Beyond mortgages
Obviously, banks have always played a major role in the housing market via the mortgages they provide. But as the nation confronts a major affordability crisis with complex causes and difficult solutions, banking leaders have sought a more proactive role.
The $49 trillion housing market has been the bedrock of Americans’ financial prosperity for generations. But the shortage of millions of homes, as well as millions of affordable rentals, has meant more Americans’ financial lives are being stifled because housing eats into their ability to save and invest.
At a Washington, DC, conference hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center in June, Edward Skyler, head of Enterprise Services for Citi, said the private sector has roles to play around the edges.
“We need American ingenuity and entrepreneurship to help us build cheaper,” Skyler said. “We need to apply some of this great intellectual capacity and allocate some of that brain power to housing, because it is ripe for innovation.”
This year, Citi launched its “Blueprint for Housing Opportunity Initiative,” a $60 billion plan to support the preservation and construction of 250,000 homes. Last year, it financed $7 billion to support 30,000 units, and the new initiatives would double the pace, Skyler said.
Citi also committed $50 million to support housing nonprofits, including “seed funding” to support pre-development work like architecture and zoning studies on new housing projects. That support helps those companies prepare developments to turn dirt. Their role in their cities makes their housing pitches more likely to be successful, Skyler said.
“This is an issue that is really harming Americans across the country, and not just in the big cities,” he noted.
Banks push for policy change
In the case of JPMorgan, the bank has leaned into thought leadership. It has backed housing market analysis through a policy center that advocated for reducing regulatory barriers and encouraging manufactured housing innovation.
“We’re really trying to look at what levers, and particularly state and local levers, that can reduce the cost drivers of what it takes to build housing,” Olivia Barrow Strauss, vice president of Housing Policy at JPMorgan, recently told Realtor.com®.
And for Citi, policy advocacy is part of its plan, too. Its blueprint encourages lawmakers to consider changes to the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, a tool that helps finance affordable housing development. Allowing it to be transferrable would encourage more banks and other investors to put money behind the credit that developers can use, Skyler said.
“We’re seeing a lot of money left on the table,” he noted. “Our idea is simply to … try and create a market for them.”
The banks are also backing the private sector. Wells Fargo has awarded $53 million to back innovations in home construction and financing through its “Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge.” Its foundation has contributed $830 million toward housing efforts since 2019.
The initiatives aren’t just a philanthropic effort, either. Dennis Shea, co-leader of BPC’s Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy, says the housing shortage has major macroeconomic effects that limit labor mobility, productivity, and economics. That in turn limits bank customers and stifles growth of the broader private sector.
At Chase, Sheets says the bank is aggressively trying to grow its mortgage business. It originated $52.8 billion in mortgage volume in 2025, up from $40.8 billion in 2024, according to its most recent financial reporting.
The bank’s housing initiatives offer it “a more comprehensive view” for how it can positively influence housing supply, he says.
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