As housing prices soar and first-time buyers enter the market later in life than ever, the Trump administration is proposing 50-year mortgages to ease monthly payments. While this could offer some benefits, many experts say the extended terms could dramatically inflate total costs and delay or even eliminate the benefits of homeownership.
There is definitely a market for this, but is it really all it’s cracked up to be?
Let’s break down the pros and cons…
There’s no question that there are some benefits of a 50-year mortgage. The most obvious is a slightly lower monthly payment.
For example, a $410,000 home with a 20% down payment would require a mortgage of $328,000. Compared to a traditional 30-year mortgage, your monthly payments would be $230 lower at $1,800 with the 50-year mortgage, but you would pay $348,974 more in additional interest. The difference is staggering.
In a sense, it will make homes more “affordable” from a monthly payment perspective, but it dramatically increases the overall cost a buyer will pay over the life of the loan.
Due to inflation and rising home costs, the median age for a first-time homebuyer in the U.S. today is 40, a record high according to the National Association of Realtors 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. This means a 50-year mortgage would mean paying it off just in time for their 90th birthday—about 12 years older than the current U.S. life expectancy.
So while this financial product does offer some benefits, those benefits come at a cost.
Tatiana Zagorovski, CEO and founder of Trio Realty Partners, says, “Because of the amortization schedule, it will take considerably longer to build equity. The interest on a mortgage is front loaded, so you’ll reach the tipping point where you start paying down the principle around the 223rd payment, or approximately 18 years into the loan. For a 50-year mortgage, you would reach this point around the 463rd payment, or approximately 38 years into the loan.”
She explains that while a 50-year mortgage can make homeownership more affordable , it’s not the right path for everyone, saying, “There is a greater risk of ending up upside down, where you owe more than your home is worth, because of market fluctuation. And this risk is bigger than most realize because home values are currently falling all across the country. If you find yourself in this situation, you may end up locked into a home that you’re unable to sell because of the disparity between the balance and current market value. If that happens, you could be forced into a short sale or foreclosure, resulting in losing all of the money you’ve invested in that home, the home itself, and your credit rating.”
Derek Carlson, president and managing broker with Realty ONE Group MVP, says, “If the market continues to go up, then great, everyone’s happy. But what happens if we have a decline in prices? That’s going to be a problem because home owners won’t be able to sell or refinance in that situation.”
Experts warn that it’s not just those who take out a 50-year mortgage that will be affected though. This new financial instrument will drive home prices up because it essentially dumps a new pool of buyers into the market, creating more competition for homes. As prices climb, home affordability goes down, wiping out any potential benefit that a longer mortgage period offered in the first place.
And it gets even worse when you consider the implications of less financially savvy buyers making risky buying decisions they really can’t afford.
Zagorovski explains, “The reality of the situation is that those who “need” a 50-year mortgage to qualify for a home are generally less financially literate and less financially stable. They also tend to bring a smaller down payment to the table. These factors lead to a smaller margin for error in budgeting, so that single financial challenge can quickly spiral out of control. And because many of these buyers are less financially literate, they’re more likely to overbid on a home, making their situation even more fragile.”
Losing a home can unleash a chain of financial events that take years to recover from.
All of the payments a buyer made up to that point, along with any equity built up so far, is instantly gone, and they could end up still owing more money to the lender. And the damage to their credit score will make it harder and more expensive to get financing for anything in the future. Keep in mind that repairing your credit, especially if a foreclosure or bankruptcy is involved, typically takes up to seven years. And of course, there’s the added cost of securing a new place to live.
The financial impact can be devastating.
And there are regulatory issues to work through before this can even become a reality because this is an entirely new financial product.
Carlson says “Right now regulation calls for just a 30 year mortgage, so the laws like the Dodd-Frank Act would have to change. The current max term is 30 years, so obviously the laws would have to change for the qualified mortgage to expand to 50 years. Who’s going to be on the hook? That’s the big question. I mean, I don’t know if you’re going to need your grandchildren to co-sign these loans or not.”
He also believes a 50-year mortgage won’t have the widespread benefits its proponents claim it will. He says, “I don’t think it’s the fix—I think there are other things that can be worked on. I think they need to start swinging those hammers, get the construction rates up, and start building more homes in this country. I don’t think it’s the silver bullet that’s going to fix affordability, but I will tell you, if it allows more first time home buyers to get into the home, I think it’s a good thing as long as you don’t take away the 30 year or 15 year options.
So is a 50-year mortgage right for you?
Carlson says it can be for some people in some cases, especially if it helps them purchase a home they couldn’t have otherwise purchased. He says, “We can talk about the difference in equity and interest payments, but the reality is that I still believe buying a home, even if it’s with a 50-year mortgage, is an opportunity for people to get that dream of owning a home in the United States.”
Zagorovski offers her insight, saying, “When you buy a property using a loan rather than cash, you’re essentially buying it at the value of today’s dollars, but paying it back at the value of tomorrow’s dollars. Since inflation almost always goes up, decreasing the value of the U.S. dollar over time, this is a financial advantage for you assuming the rest of the numbers on the deal make financial sense.”
Both experts reiterated that buyers need to be careful, though, because home prices don’t always go up—often, they stagnate or even decline. That’s the exact situation we’re seeing right now with the housing market currently in a correction phase.
Ultimately, a 50-year mortgage is neither good nor bad on its own merits. It’s simply another financial instrument to consider.
The key is to analyze the financial merit of purchasing a property using a 50-year mortgage vs. other financing options and carefully weigh the pros and cons of each. It’s also critical to remember that no transaction occurs in a vacuum—in addition to your ability to afford the mortgage itself, you also need to evaluate current market trends, especially at the local level, to determine the viability of the purchase price and total interest payments over the long-term.
