Donald Trump Proposes 50-Year Mortgages in Response to Soaring Home Costs

• Donald Trump suggested that he might be open to the idea 50-year mortgage terms on Saturday, Nov. 8

Donald Trump says he wants to make home buying more affordable. Yet, there are some big concerns that his latest proposal might actually make things more expensive.

On Saturday, Nov. 8, Trump, 79, shared a graphic on Truth Social that suggested he was open to the idea of Americans having access to 50-year mortgages.

The graphic featured an image of Trump alongside former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, underneath a banner reading “Great American Presidents.”

It was done to associate the idea with Roosevelt’s “30-Year Mortgage” plan that helped make home-owning more affordable in the 1940s as part of his famous New Deal program.

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, appeared to confirm that Trump was looking into the idea, resharing the graphic on X and writing, “Thanks to President Trump, we are indeed working on The 50 year Mortgage — a complete game changer.”

The idea behind the 50-year mortgage is that it would provide homebuyers with more time to pay back a loan on a home.

For instance, a $200,000 home with a 5% down payment would have a $1976 monthly payment on a 15-year mortgage at a 5% interest rate, according to Fannie Mae’s Mortgage Calculator.

Under a 30-year mortgage, the figure drops to $1,493 a month. It then goes even lower to $1,336 a month when the mortgage is extended to 50 years.

The proposal comes as the median age of the typical homebuyer in America has increased dramatically over the years. According to data assembled by the National Association of Realtors, the average age of a first-time homebuyer was 38 in 2024. During the 1980s, first-time buyers were “in their late 20s,” the report added.

This month, the organization said that the median age of first-time buyers had now increased to 40, and warned that “delayed or denied homeownership until age 40 instead of 30 can mean losing roughly $150,000 in equity on a typical starter home.”

While payments would decrease monthly, the extended period poses a different risk: increased total interest payments. According to reporting by ABC, a homebuyer would pay nearly double the amount of interest on a home when comparing a 50-year mortgage to a 30-year option on a $300,000 home at a 5% interest rate.

Trump’s proposal faces additional challenges, including a logistical one posed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Consumer Protection Act, which was implemented after the Great Recession in 2008. ABC noted that the act does not allow the government to approve mortgage terms of 40 or 50 years.

There have also been complaints that extended mortgage terms would also leave Americans in debt for longer periods of time.

Gennadiy Goldberg, head of US rates strategy at TD Securities, told Politico that an extended mortgage would be “more of a stopgap band-aid to address affordability,” adding, “It would lead to buyers building equity in their homes more slowly.”

Sharon Cornelissen, director of housing at the Consumer Federation of America, added that the increased mortgages would make it so that “people won’t be able to build wealth through homeownership” anymore.

Additionally, the increased age of first-time buyers and lengthier mortgage periods would make it so that buyers were paying off their homes as late as their 90s. Politico noted that this could affect Americans’ ability to retire.

Even fellow Republicans have come out against the idea, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

On X, she wrote that extended mortgages “will ultimately reward the banks, mortgage lenders. and home builders while people pay far more in interest over time and die before they ever pay off their home. In debt forever, in debt for life!”

Trump’s proposal on Truth Social does not appear to have developed into anything official, however. In a statement shared with PEOPLE, the White House said, “President Trump is always exploring new ways to improve housing affordability for everyday Americans. Any official policy changes will be announced by the White House.”

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Meanwhile, Pulte noted that his organization is looking into “a WIDE arsenal of solutions” to make buying a home easier for young people.

“We hear you. We are laser focused on ensuring the American Dream for YOUNG PEOPLE and that can only happen on the economic level of homebuying,” he wrote on X.

In an additional post, Pulte noted that they were looking at “assumable or portable mortgages.” The former would allow a mortgage to transfer between homebuyers, while the latter would enable a homebuyer to transfer their mortgages to a new property.

“We are also working on ways to give relief in the 5 year mortgage, the 10 year mortgage, and the 15 year mortgage,” he wrote in yet another post on X.