Just to be clear.. I am not responding to this as a political statement.. I'm Canadian and don't care who Americans vote for (I do have opinions but am not interested in the vitriol that is displayed in the thread being directed at me), however... there are flaws in your logic...
Firstly, having an additional 25k in down payment is a much greater advantage than an increase of 25k in purchase cost would be a disadvantage. Even if house prices were to automatically go up by 25k in asking price, the addition of 25k in down payment will allow customers to enter the housing market that wouldn't have been able to before - driving market volume, taxes, economic growth, a net gain for the government and a means for lower income individuals to participate in the housing market. Whether this is a good use of government money is not for me to judge.. but economically it would have a positive impact for lower income households and likely a net gain for the government in terms of economic growth and tax revenue. I am not familiar with the USA in particular, but the macro economics of the housing market is something I am very familiar with in Canada.
This is why in Canada CMHC was put into place (to allow citizens with a lower down payment enter the housing market) and you'll note that Canada has had similar programs to help people get into the housing market. It's simply good politics to help people participate in the housing market as it drives economic growth, taxes, government fees etc. Good for people, good for the government.
Secondly Grocery store margins are historically 1-3 percent (that isn't why they're profitable).. Grocery stores don't make money on margin.. they make money on volume. A simple example would be that if item A cost $100 and they made $1 on the sale, you would think that was bad right?... 1% return... but the reality is that they make money on volume by selling 10 billion of item A therefore making $100,000. It's the sheer volume of sales that make it extremely profitable. It's a matter of the incredibly high volume of sales that they make.. price gouging is just a bonus that if removed will affect their bottom line in a negligible manner. The net effect would be to lower prices on a small percentage of items that are overpriced.. again a benefit for lower income households where the cost of food is a serious issue.
Both of these examples seem to be geared to help lower income Americans. I don't see any reason to criticize them.
Happy to be critical of both these examples. Neither of these concepts will work in the long-term.
So you've given someone 25k for a down payment. Now they have to keep making the monthly mortgage payments.
Many of these people would have had trouble qualifying for mortgages in the first place because of their incomes.
Is the government going to top up their incomes as well? Probably not.
Many of them (not all) will default on their mortgages and we're back to square one.
It's another misguided attempt to buy votes
Regarding volume and "gouging"
How do you remove volume from the equation? You can't.
Who decides the price of something?
Not the government.
Prices are decided by the seller and the buyer. It's called supply and demand.
Supply and demand is kind of a golden rule. It's always been that way and it's never going to change.
Governments have tried and have never succeeded.
Harris and the Democrats aren't proposing these things to help people, they're proposing them in an attempt to get elected.
Lastly, the "government" doesn't have any money of its own.
It comes from taxpayers.