President Donald Trump brushed off criticism about a plan to offer mortgages with 50-year terms.
Over the weekend, Trump floated a 50-year mortgage plan on Truth Social. While the idea of extending mortgage terms may initially seem appealing, it has a few serious drawbacks. Perhaps the most daunting is that legislation passed after the 2008 financial crisis explicitly limits most regulated mortgages to a term of 30 years at the maximum. Longer-term loans have higher interest rates and give homeowners less equity in their monthly payments.
On Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” on Nov. 10, host Laura Ingraham asked Trump about “significant MAGA backlash” from people who believe a 50-year mortgage benefits banks and prolongs the time it takes to own a home.
“It’s not even a big deal … you pay something less from 30 — some people had a 40, and then now they have a 50 …” Trump said. “All it means is you pay less per month, you pay it over a longer period of time. It’s not like a big factor. It might help a little bit.”
Here is what we know about the plan:
Trump’s 50-year mortgage plan draws concern
Trump posted a picture of himself and former President Roosevelt under the header “Great American Presidents” on Truth Social on Nov. 8.
“Thanks to President Trump, we are indeed working on The 50 year Mortgage — a complete game changer,” Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte wrote on X. In a follow-up post, he said the idea is “simply a potential weapon in a WIDE arsenal of solutions that we are developing right now. STAY TUNED!”
But other Trump allies balked at the idea. Conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shared on X that she opposes the move, arguing that it rewards “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.”
Here is what experts had to say about the plan:
Interest rates go up on longer-term loans
Yes, extending the term of a mortgage from 30 to 50 years could drop the monthly payment, Richard Green, a professor at the University of Southern California, wrote on LinkedIn. A 50-year amortization would cost $564 per $100,000 of mortgage versus $632 for the same amount for a 30-year loan, Green calculated.
For a $500,000 mortgage, in other words, the monthly payment would be roughly $340 cheaper.
But that doesn’t account for the fact that longer loan terms naturally have higher interest rates because they’re riskier for lenders. That’s already clear, Green wrote, in the difference between 15-year mortgage rates and those for 30-year loans.
Longer loan terms build less equity
When homeowners make monthly mortgage payments, a portion of the payment goes to cover interest costs, and a portion goes towards the principal loan. The longer the term of the loan, the longer it takes for monthly payments to go toward actually owning the home.
We already have real-life evidence of why it’s important to have equity in a home, thanks the subprime bubble and bust in the 2000s, USA TODAY reported. When home prices dropped, millions of Americans became “underwater” on their loans, meaning they owed more to a lender than their homes were worth, and they had “negative equity.”
Extensive research from that period has shown that while most Americans do try very hard to stay in their homes, they are far more likely to default on their mortgage or walk away from it altogether if they are underwater.
“Underwater homeowners are 150% to 200% more likely to default on their mortgages than those with positive equity,” noted this 2016 academic paper from Colorado State University and Monmouth University researchers.
The St. Louis Fed explained the idea this way in 2014: “Negative equity is a necessary condition for default. Otherwise, households would sell their houses, pay back their mortgages and keep any remaining funds.”
Why is housing so expensive? Would longer mortgage terms help?
A 50-year mortgage may not address the root of why housing is so expensive. There’s near-universal agreement from all kinds of housing observers that the affordability crisis is one of (non)-supply and demand.
Construction fell off a cliff after the housing bubble burst over a decade ago and never really recovered. After years of underbuilding, most estimates suggest the United States needs literally millions more homes. Until there’s more housing available, in other words – for renters, young buyers, seniors, and everyone in between – the crisis won’t let up.
What is the average mortgage rate in Florida?
Florida was among the Top 10 states with the highest average mortgage rates in the second quarter of 2025, according to an analysis by WalletHub.
Nationally, a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.22% the week of Nov. 6, according to Freddie Mac, which, by comparison, listed the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.5%. Here is how that compares to some Florida mortgages, as of Nov. 11:
Sales of existing single-family homes in Florida were up 13.6% in September compared to the same time last year, in part driven by lower mortgage rates, according to Florida Realtors.
Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@gannett.com. Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @kinseycrowley.bsky.social.
