Housing affordability is a major challenge—apparently even for federal housing officials.
The Washington Post reports that Benjamin Hobbs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s assistant secretary for public and Indian housing, has listed a cash fund for a home down payment on his online wedding registry on the wedding planning platform Zola.
The registry is now password-protected.
According to the Canton Repository, Hobbs, 38, is set to wed his fiancée, Madison Greif, on June 20, 2026.
“Benjamin Hobbs’ public wedding registry asking for monetary gifts does raise some alarm bells. Public officials must be especially careful to avoid even the appearance of someone trying to influence them or curry favor,” Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, interim vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project On Government Oversight, tells Realtor.com®. “This kind of vigilance is essential to ensuring the integrity of government policy and decision-making and to preserving public trust.”
But Robbie Myers, HUD’s deputy assistant secretary for strategic communications, told the Post that Hobbs “is in compliance with all relevant laws and will not accept any improper gifts.”
Myers continued: “Thanks to the largest tax cut for working families in American history, Mr. Hobbs now has confidence in the housing market, and if family and friends wish to help his pursuit of the American Dream, they are welcome to do so as ethics has approved such gifts for a once-in-a-lifetime joyous occasion.”
However, ethics experts told the Post that people such as lobbyists or politicians could possibly donate to Hobbs’ housing fund to try to curry favor with him.
Realtor.com reached out to Hobbs and Myers for comment and did not hear back.
Down payment registries are becoming more popular
It turns out that Hobbs’ request is not that unusual—especially in a climate where the median listing price of a home is a steep $403,450 and mortgage interest rates are currently 6.11%.
Hobbs lives in Washington, DC, where the median home price reached $550,000 in February, standing roughly $150,000 above the national median.
“To comfortably afford a home at this price point, assuming current mortgage rates and a 10% down payment, a household would ideally need a minimum income of $120,000,” says Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com.
“However, with the local median income currently hovering just above $100,000, the path to homeownership remains a steep climb, particularly in the metro’s most sought-after neighborhoods.”
Jones says this affordability gap is forcing prospective buyers to get creative.
According to the National Association of Realtors® 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers report, 22% of first-time buyers received help on down payment funds from relatives or friends through a gift or loan.
And 48% of newlywed homeowners—buyers married within the past two years—asked for money toward their down payments instead of typical wedding gifts, according to a 2025 LendingTree survey.
A 2023 Realtor.com survey found that 85% of newlyweds who’d created a wedding registry in the previous 24 months would have preferred to have received money toward a down payment on a home rather than a physical gift. Also, 80% said that if they were creating a gift registry today, they would include an option for people to gift them money toward homebuying expenses.
In that same survey, 30% of wedding attendees said they were open to giving financial gifts in lieu of traditional presents.
Newlywed Eliza Palas asked for guests to contribute to a home down payment on her wedding registry last year.
“A future home feels like a thoughtful, lasting investment that friends and family can be part of—no matter the size of their contribution,” Palas told Realtor.com.
Sammi Kobrin, brand director at Zola, told the Post it isn’t taboo to ask for cash on a registry, especially among younger couples.
“This idea of having your guests fund this next step of your life is becoming much more practical,” she said.
Trump administration tackles affordable housing
Hobbs is among those in the Trump administration pledging to make housing more affordable.
On March 13, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at reducing regulations that slow down new-home construction and push the costs of building higher as part of a broader effort to tackle the nation’s housing affordability crisis.
The order signed on Friday came a day after the Senate’s passage of the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which seeks to expand housing supply and reduce regulatory barriers to construction.
The bill has dozens of housing reforms aimed at making it easier to build homes and obtain financing to buy them. It also puts forth a ban on major institutional investors buying single-family homes.
A separate executive order on Friday focused on expanding access to mortgage credit by easing regulatory burdens on lenders, particularly smaller community banks, to make home loans easier for qualified buyers.