Dimon slams mortgage regulations for pushing rates higher, hurting lower-income homebuyers

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Monday criticized financial regulators for not easing rules that are raising costs for borrowers buying a home that he says are unnecessary.

Dimon was speaking at JPMorgan Chase’s annual investor day, which was held virtually, and discussed his frustration with mortgage lending rules that increase costs and make homeownership less affordable for lower-income buyers.

“I’ve mentioned over and over, the cost of mortgages is like 50 or 75 basis points higher because of regulations that don’t need to be there, that have no benefit to safety and soundness,” he said.

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“And you know who that hurts the most? Lower-income Americans, that’s who it hurts the most – people buying a small home, their first starter home, and I think they should fix that,” Dimon added.

He went on to say that it is “a huge disappointment that we have not gotten around to doing that in the last 10 years.”

Dimon also discussed his views on the overall economy, expressing concern about the prospect of stagflation – a period of elevated inflation coupled with slow growth and potential weakness in the labor market.

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“I think the worst one for a bank and for most companies is stagflation, which is basically a recession with inflation,” he said, adding that the odds of stagflation occurring are about two times what the market expects.

The longtime JPMorgan Chase CEO also weighed in on what he sees as complacency from central banks and the markets given budget deficits and tariffs.

“We have huge deficits; we have what I consider almost complacent central banks. You all think they can manage all this. I don’t think they can,” he said.

Dimon said that tariffs have created a lot of risk in the economy because of their impact on trade, adding that he thinks the market is complacent about those risks and the potential for the economy to slow and consumer prices to rise.

“My own view is people feel pretty good because you haven’t seen effective tariffs,” Dimon said. “The market came down 10%. It’s back 10%. I think that’s an extraordinary amount of complacency.”

“When I’ve seen all these things adding up that are on the fringes of extreme, I don’t think we could predict the outcome, and I think the chance of inflation going up and stagflation is a little bit higher than other people think,” he said. “There are too many things out there, and I think you’re going to see the effect.”

“Even at these low levels, if they stay where they are today, [those are] pretty extreme tariffs. And you also don’t know how every country is going to respond,” Dimon added.