This profile originally appeared on No Corporate Cabinet, where Revolving Door Project helps to track the corporate insiders and top executives who Trump has picked to run the government, at the expense of working families.
Bill Pulte: FHFA Nominee & Extremely Online Scion Of A Real Estate Empire
Bill Pulte was appointed by Donald Trump to be director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), a move celebrated by the mortgage banking industry. This appointment comes amidst widespread speculation that the Trump administration will continue their path towards re-privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that began in Trump 1.0.
Pulte is the scion of the Pulte family. His grandfather, also named William J Pulte, made billions by founding and leading one of America’s largest homebuilding companies: PulteGroup.
Bill Pulte was on PulteGroup’s board of directors from 2016 to 2020.
He has been expected to support privatization efforts within the agency both because of his background as a private equity investor, and because of his outward, high level of loyalty to Trump. Pulte has also advocated for expanding the housing supply by putting less government regulations on homebuilders, and implied that immigration is causing the housing shortage.
Support For Trump
The Pultes have been big financial backers of Trump and Republican electoral campaigns through multiple election cycles.
In the 2022 election cycle, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) alleged that Bill Pulte used a shell company to make $500,000 in illegal donations to Trump’s MAGA Inc Superpac.
Pulte Family Office / Pulte Capital Partners
Bill Pulte is the CEO of Pulte Capital Partners, a private equity firm. It is a subsidiary of his family investment firm, Pulte Family Office, that he founded, along with Capital Partners, alongside his grandfather in 2011. He is the CEO and Chairman of the Pulte Family Office.
Pulte has said seven other Pulte family members are involved in running the Pulte Family Office. The family office has other subsidiaries for its various businesses, such as Pulte Health and Pulte Capital Rentals.
The family office has bought millions of dollars worth of homes from PulteGroup, with the intention of renting them out through Pulte Capital Rentals.
Pulte Capital Partners reported purchasing over 100,000 shares of PulteGroup.
Pulte Group
Bill briefly served on the board of directors of PulteGroup, from 2016 to 2020. Although he left the company, Bill has said he still holds a significant stake in PulteGroup and has engaged in public “shareholder activist” pushes to sway its board’s decisionmaking. One day before he was nominated by Trump to lead the FHFA, Bill was promoting PulteGroup on his Twitter profile.
The Pultes founded Pulte Mortgage LLC in 1972 as a subsidiary of PulteGroup. This LLC turns a profit by originating mortgages for the houses it sells and then selling those mortgages on the secondary mortgage market – often to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Internet Personality
Bill Pulte is known for his “philanthropic” internet persona: he has donated over $1 million on Twitter via direct giving to his followers. His direct giving has been criticized for creating “grotesque hunger games”, and for being ineffective at solving problems that are the result of systemic injustices. The Pulte Family Charitable Foundation, led by his relatives, issued a public statement distancing themselves from Bill.
When he was an undergraduate student at Northwestern University, Bill Pulte operated his own private helicopter business.
He has claimed he earned his money “independently” of his family or his inheritance from his grandfather.
PHOTO: FHFA Nominee Bill Pulte, left, and HUD Secretary Scott Turner, right. Posted by Scott Turner on X, February 24 2025.