In all likelihood, I won’t be able to buy a home for at least another decade. This means that I wouldn’t be finished paying off a 50-year loan until I was close to 90 years old.
President Trump proposes 50-year mortgage
Donald Trump proposed a 50-year mortgage as a way to tackle the affordability crisis, but not everyone thinks that’s a good idea.
Fox – 7 Austin
I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll probably never own a home. This is part of a trade-off I made to work in an industry I love and a city I adore.
I currently live in New York City, where the median cost of a home is over $800,000. I have no family ties to the area, meaning there are no apartments for me to inherit. But I wouldn’t even be able to afford a home if I went back to Durham, North Carolina, the city where I used to live, where the average home price is half of what it is in the Big Apple. I don’t have enough saved for a down payment and likely wouldn’t until a family member passes away.
It isn’t impossible for someone in Gen Z to be a homeowner – I know several people my age who own their homes, and our generation is more likely to own a home than millennials and Gen X when they were our age. But as we face a housing shortage and increasing mortgage rates, homeownership continues to feel out of reach.
In theory, this means that the Trump administration floating a 50-year mortgage should make me happy. After all, it could be the only shot I have at home ownership.
I don’t buy that. It seems more like a capitalist nightmare.
50-year mortgages are ridiculous. So is lack of any other solution.
President Donald Trump seems to have decided to back the idea within 10 minutes of having it presented to him, according to Politico, completely catching White House officials off guard when he posted an image to Truth Social comparing him to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who implemented the 30-year mortgage in the wake of the Great Depression.
People on both sides of the aisle immediately said it was a bad idea, noting that it would lead people to pay exorbitant amounts of interest while they remain in debt for the rest of their adult lives, potentially passing on the debt to their families.
You know it’s a bad idea when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, and Fox News columnists don’t even agree with it.
Even if Trump shot this idea onto the internet without a second thought, the fact that this is supposed to be the way my generation achieves the American dream is so bleak. There have been no real ideas to fix the affordability crisis in the president’s second term, only animosity toward immigrants and trans people and cuts to government services.
At the same time, the government wants us to start families and own homes without changing anything to help us.
If Trump really wanted to make homeownership more affordable, he would do something to subsidize the cost of building homes so that the supply goes up. He could commit to expanding government assistance for first-time homebuyers. Instead, he is suggesting a haphazardly planned mortgage overhaul that would primarily benefit lenders.
For Gen Z, mortgage math doesn’t add up to home ownership
What worries me is that people my age are so desperate to own a home that they might consider taking on these lifetime mortgages. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gen Z and millennials are the most likely to consider the 50-year mortgage. It makes sense, after all: A mortgage that lasts that long is less likely to appeal to someone who’s already halfway through their life.
But to me, the idea of being in debt to a bank for the rest of my life, even after I’ve retired, seems nothing short of horrifying. In all likelihood, I won’t be able to buy a home for at least another decade. This means that I wouldn’t be finished paying off a 50-year loan until I was close to 90 years old – if I live that long.
It means that if interest rates are similar to what they are for the 30-year loan, a $500,000 house – an impossible find in New York City but an average home in Durham – would cost me an additional $1.1 million in interest, according to analysis by LendingTree.
My payments wouldn’t even be that much lower month to month, meaning I still wouldn’t have much money left over for the family that Vice President JD Vance wants me to have so he can receive Social Security payments.
I’d love to own a house, an apartment or a condo. I care less about the financial reasons than I do about what a home stands for. My dream home is simply something I can own – a place where I can paint the walls whatever color I want and decide when I want to redo the kitchen.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno