Trump's 50-Year Mortgage? More Like a 50-Year Nightmare.
Okay, so Trump's latest "genius" idea is a 50-year mortgage. Seriously?
The "American Dream" or a Debt Sentence?
Bill Pulte, the FHFA director, is out there on X.com (ofcourse) talking about this being a "game changer" and a "weapon" to help young people buy homes. Right. A weapon alright, pointed directly at their financial futures. Move over, 30-year mortgage. The Trump White House is working on a 50-year option to break the housing market gridlock
Let's be real, this isn't about helping anyone own a home. It's about juicing the market, kicking the can down the road, and making banks richer.
The sales pitch is lower monthly payments. Fannie Mae's calculator says you'd save like, what, a couple hundred bucks a month on a $400k house? Big whoop. But what about the interest? You're paying for half a century! You'll be dead before you own the damn thing.
Marjorie Taylor Greene gets it. Even she thinks it's a scam to reward banks and homebuilders while trapping people in debt. And if MTG is raising red flags, you know it's bad.
And Pulte blaming Jerome Powell for "artificially high" rates? Give me a break. Powell's trying to fix the mess Trump made in the first place. It's always someone else's fault, ain't it?
Equity? What's Equity?
Remember the 2008 crash? People walking away from their homes because they owed more than they were worth? This 50-year mortgage is just begging for a repeat performance. Except this time, it'll be even worse because people will have even less equity.
Richard Green at USC spells it out: longer loans, less equity. It's not rocket science.
These geniuses think stretching out the loan magically makes housing affordable? It doesn't. It just makes it more expensive in the long run and enriches the banks. The real problem is supply and demand. We need more houses, period. Not more ways to indebt ourselves.
Oh, and Pulte is also floating the idea of Fannie and Freddie taking equity stakes in private companies? What the hell is that about? Are we just turning the entire housing market into some kind of giant casino?
I swear, sometimes I think these people are actively trying to destroy the country. Then again, maybe I'm just being cynical.
The "Lock-In Effect"
They say this is also supposed to solve the "lock-in effect," where people don't want to sell their homes because they don't want to give up their low interest rates. So, the solution is to get more people locked into even longer mortgages? Makes perfect sense.
And the average first-time homebuyer is 40 years old now? Forty! That's insane. They're closer to retirement than they are to graduating high school. And Trump's solution is to saddle them with a 50-year debt?
I guess that's the plan: to keep us all working until we drop, just to pay off the banks.