President Donald Trump recently floated a 50-year mortgage term as the pathway to creating more homeowners in the United States, but critics worry his focus is misdirected.
By growing the demand for housing, the 50-year mortgage would organically decrease the supply, leading to higher housing prices — the opposite of what the administration is seeking to do in terms of increasing affordability for consumers, according to Dr. Gary Wolfram, director of economics at Hillsdale College.
“The answer to ownership of affordable housing isn’t to increase the demand for houses, but to increase the supply of houses,” he told the Washington Examiner during an interview this week.
The average home price in the U.S. has grown from about $140,000 to about $503,800 as of 2025 over the past two decades, according to data from Zillow. At the same time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce put the housing shortage at around 5 million homes in an analysis this fall, with other estimates placing the number much higher.
Meanwhile, homeownership declined for the first time in nearly a decade this year, even as the number of renters increased 2.6% in 2025. And the median age of first-time buyers rose to 40 in 2025, up sharply from 33 just five years ago, according to an annual report by the National Association of Realtors.
Wolfram believes the president’s effort to address the housing market through a half-century mortgage loan misses what he believes to be the true root of the problem: supply. Trump would be better off trying to bring down prices by spurring the development of more housing, including through targeting stringent zoning regulations and bringing down high costs of building for developers, the professor said.
Increasing the demand for homes through the 50-year proposal will only make the situation worse, as it will “drive up housing prices and make it less affordable for people” to buy homes, Wolfram said.
E.J. Antoni, chief economist for the Heritage Foundation, agreed, suggesting Trump’s proposal holds an underlying problem “of a fundamental mismatch of supply and demand.”
He pointed to millions of people allowed to enter the country under the Biden administration’s relaxed immigration policy as one of the factors that have caused a housing shortage. Deporting them and expanding infrastructure, such as roads, Antoni said, will additionally alleviate issues with the housing supply, in addition to rolling back regulations.
“On the supply side, we simply need to build more homes and more roads. The latter would reduce congestion and allow for more communities to be built on less expensive land further from city centers without greatly increasing commutes. Building more homes requires rolling back regulation from the local to the federal level and in many areas, from construction to finance,” he added.
Aside from debate about whether it will sap an already depleted housing supply, the innate merits, or lack thereof, of a 50-year mortgage proposal has experts split.
There has been intense criticism from some who say that, while it lowers monthly payments, the plan would enslave buyers to a lifetime of paying interest payments, making the bank a type of landlord.
But to Dr. James Mohs, Ph.D., an associate professor of accounting, finance, and taxation at the University of New Haven, the 50-year mortgage could be viewed as an entrance point for buyers to get their foot in the door, while still providing them a pathway to exit the long-term loan so they’re not chained to 50 years of payments.
In a hypothetical situation, a young buyer could take advantage of lower payments on the 50-year term to purchase a starter home, build equity, and then refinance to secure a shorter mortgage term, eventually selling the home altogether as their income grows, Mohs said, emphasizing that taking personal responsibility of the process would be key to success.
“This isn’t meant to be, you know….someplace you’re going to end up for the rest of your life,” he said. “I mean, what do we all do? We all get a starter home. You know, we have families. All of the sudden, we need more space. We sell that. We trade it up. In the interim, we build some equity in that house, and everything moves along.”
“You start small, and you build, right?” Mohs added. “That’s America.”
For example, a buyer could put down $1,385 monthly payments to buy a $225,000 home with a 30-year mortgage term with a 6.25% interest rate. The total interest over that period would be $273,600.
Or, a buyer could put down $1,226 monthly payments to buy the same house on a 50-year loan, bringing with $510,600 amounting to the total interest paid.
The 50-year term would save the buyer about $159 per month.
Antoni said the savings weren’t worth the deal.
“Reducing your monthly mortgage payment by one or two hundred dollars is hardly worth paying an additional two decades’ worth of interest. The fact that such an idea is even being floated right now is evidence that we’ve been in an affordability crisis for years and people are demanding that their elected representatives do something about it,” he said.
And Antoni further questioned the idea of pursuing a 50-year mortgage with a goal of refinancing.
“It takes much too long to build up equity. Even after a decade, you’ll have made nearly no progress at all paying down the principal because of how long the term is,” he said.
But Mohs argued that by exercising financial discipline, buyers could navigate the proposal successfully by avoiding credit card debt, financing at a lower rate “when it’s appropriate,” and working intentionally towards making extra payments on the principal.
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“When you start talking about, well, ‘you could have, would have, should have,’ who knows,” he said, when it comes to concerns people who utilize the 50-year option would see interest payments balloon. “But the whole point is, if you’re fiscally responsible and you start paying down your principal and your rates go down, right? ….And let’s say mortgage rates drop so they refinance. But they have to know these things. They should be thinking about these things.”
“You just can’t get into something, put your head in the sand and walk away, and think everything’s going to be fine. You’ve got to take ownership of your own processes,” Mohs added. “People have to take responsibility for their own actions as well.”
