The Trump administration is dropping its efforts to push for 50-year mortgages as a strategy to encourage affordable homeownership.
In November, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte encouraged President Trump to float the idea for the 50-year mortgage. But after a backlash from many conservative allies and no great support from the financial services industry, Pulte bluntly announced the proposal was off the table.
“I think we have other priorities,” Pulte told reporters on Friday when asked about the proposal.
Politico is reporting that the White House is drafting an executive order focused on affordable homeownership that include changing regulations that would enable consumers to tap into their retirement and college savings accounts to cover down payment costs. Last week, Trump announced he was “immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes,” but he also acknowledged that plan would need congressional approval to take effect.
“…an executive order focused on affordable homeownership that include changing regulations that would enable consumers to tap into their retirement and college savings accounts to cover down payment costs.”
Yes, never think of actually increasing the median wages of Americans, just keep forcing them to spend their savings, even as corporations have nearly stopped pensions and forced employees into 401ks (which they can then turn around and take money away from instead of saving for).
All from the same people that also want to get rid of Social Security (remember THAT??) and defund or eliminate every other safety net the government is supposed to provide (so we can fund bailouts to farmers in other countries after tariffs killed our OWN farmers first).
Fifty year mortgages were never a good idea. Just another boondoggle for builders and lenders and REIT managers. Terrible for average humans. Only took them a year to figure out what sane, ethical people knew in the first place.
Agreed!
I don’t think there was a single large lending institution that was in favor of this. It was just another shoot from the hip statement that sounded good in his own mind without vetting to any staff.
There should be some limits on large owners (say over 20 single-family homes) in purchasing homes for rent in times of scarcity. There should be fewer, or no limits in times of over-supply of homes for sale. In times of scarcity, large owners in that submarket should be incented to sell homes to owner occupants. The situation needs to be separately evaluated for each sub-market in which large owners want to acquire existing homes…. which makes it more challenging to implement.
Home ownership, including single family, condo, co-ops etc. with modest initial downpayments should be encouraged, short of fraudulent loans etc., as it is for many Americans their “skin in the economic game”. All citizens should be encouraged and have a chance at homeownership. Recent statements by Blackrock/Blackstone et. al. are mostly crocodile tears.
Similarly, I support the federal government holding some mortgages of longer than 10-year maturity, for relatively short periods of time, similar to QE. Coordination between the Fed and the Administration would be helpful. I could support a 40-year mortgage term also; 50 years is too long. I could support, a return of some, not all, assumable mortgages, and perhaps some mortgages that move, as the homeowner may move, provided that there are significant, progressively lower loan to values over time.
I could also support longer term Treasury bonds, when it is advantageous for the government to do so….. which should have been done 2010 – 2021. All of this also requires careful attention to inflation, deficit, yield curve etc.