News
Article
50-Year
Mortgage Rate Would Add About 86% More Interest Over Life Of Loans
Nov 10,
2025 at 12:42 PM EST
Giulia
Carbonaro
By Giulia
Carbonaro
Senior
Housing Reporter
President
Donald Trump’s idea to introduce a 50-year mortgage rate is being picked apart
by housing and economics experts, who have expressed skepticism over how
impactful such a move would be in improving affordability for millions of
Americans currently struggling to get on the property ladder.
Trump
first floated the idea over the weekend, sharing a graphic on his social media
platform Truth Social where his portrait was side-by-side with that of Franklin
D. Roosevelt under a banner reading: “Great American Presidents.” Under
Roosevelt’s portrait, the graphic said “30-year mortgage,” which the
then-president introduced during the 1940s. Under Trump’s portrait, it said
“50-year mortgage.”
Shortly
after, the Trump-appointed director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency
(FHFA) William Pulte confirmed on X that the Trump administration was
considering introducing a 50-year mortgage as a “complete game changer” for
affordability in the U.S. housing market.
Housing
costs have skyrocketed in the years following the outbreak of the pandemic, and
mortgage rates have hovered between 6 percent and 7 percent since 2022,
chipping away at Americans’ purchasing power.
Introducing
a 50-year mortgage could help individuals and families facing higher borrowing
and homeownership costs, but experts warn that any benefit could be easily
outweighed by dragging on payments for 20 years longer than the standard
30-year term.
What Is
The Point Of Introducing A 50-Year Mortgage?
The
appeal of a 50-year mortgage “is to offer lower monthly payments to homebuyers
and break up the log jam of the current housing market which has struggled in
terms of sales pace all year,” Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com,
told Newsweek.
But
experts are skeptical of what its impact would be on the U.S. housing market
over time, and many have been vocal in their criticism of the proposal, with
CEO of American investment firm Azoria James Fishback calling it “a disgusting
insult” and “economic genocide against the Gen Z generation.”
“The
drawbacks are that a 50-year mortgage results in almost double the interest
payments of a 30-year mortgage and a longer path to meaningful home equity,”
Berner said, “and that the result of subsidizing home demand without increasing
home supply could be an increase to home prices that negates the potential
savings.”
The
design of the Trump administration’s proposal is to boost homebuyer demand,
Berner said, which has been “subdued” for the last several years as mortgage
rates have been stuck in the 6+ percent range. But an unwanted consequence
might be to make homeownership even more expensive for Americans.
“More
flexible financing is essentially a subsidy for housing demand, which will add
to the pool and buying power of homebuyers without increasing the supply of
homes,” Berner said. This, in turn, “will drive home prices up,” he warned.
“The
‘savings’ from 50-year mortgages may be totally negated by rising home prices,”
Berner said.
How Would
The Trump Administration Go About This?
Bankrate
Housing Market Analyst Jeff Ostrowski told Newsweek that, presumably, the FHFA
could direct Fannie and Freddie to begin offering 50-year loans, and lenders
could begin originating them.
But
questions remain over how the Trump administration would concretely implement
such a change—something that both the president and the FHFA director have
offered very little information about.
“One big
question is how investors would react,” Ostrowski said. “Most mortgages are
re-sold to investors, and this would be a new product,” he added.
“Another
question is how much higher mortgage rates would be on 50-year loans. Rates
would have to be somewhat higher for lenders and investors to accept the risk.”
What
Would Be Its Impact On Borrowing Costs?
According
to Berner, rates would be higher on the 50-year loan “in the same way that
30-year rates are higher than 15-year rates,” he said. “The longer the life of
the loan, the more compensation the lender will demand.”
With
those assumptions—and the additional assumption of a 6.25 percent rate—, a
50-year loan would save “at most” about $250 per month compared to the 30-year
loan, Berner estimated.
“I say
‘at most’ because I assumed the same rate for both, which would probably not be
the case,” he said. “Total interest on the 50-year loan would amount to
$816,396 compared to $438,156 on the 30-year loan, a difference of $378,240.
That’s 86 percent more interest over the life of the loans,” he said.
“After 10
years of homeownership you’d have $345,564 as a balance on your 50-year loan
compared to $303,256 on the 30-year. That’s a difference of $42,308 or 10.6
percent of the value of the home,” Berner said.
Ostrowski
agrees that the savings made possible by a potential 50-year mortgage would be
rather small.
“A
50-year loan would just extend the repayment period,” he told Newsweek. “Say I
take a $400,000 loan at 6.25 percent for 30 years. The monthly payment would be
$2,463. If you were to extend that term to 50 years and raise the rate to 7
percent, the monthly payment falls to $2,407,” he estimated.
This
would make the loan “a little more affordable,” he said, “but are 10 lattes a
month really enough to motivate a borrower to extend the repayment period?”
According
to Ostrowski, Trump’s proposal would be “a minor shift rather than a monumental
one.”
For
Berner, introducing a 50-year mortgage rate “is not the best way to solve
housing affordability.” The Trump administration, in his opinion, “would do
better to reverse tariff-induced inflation, which is keeping the rates on
existing mortgages high, and to encourage the expansion of housing supply by
promoting homebuilding,” he added.
“Buyers
do benefit from spreading out the high cost of a home purchase over a longer
period, but lenders certainly benefit too by having a longer period to charge
higher interest rates.”
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