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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director Bill Pulte said the White House is moving away from his 50-year mortgage proposal, saying the administration now has "other priorities."
The idea, first floated by Pulte and President Donald Trump in November, sparked considerable backlash among economists and industry insiders, who said that such a move would have significantly increased debt levels.
Why It Matters
After years of rising home prices and historically high borrowing costs, homeownership has become harder to achieve for many Americans—and harder to maintain once they have it.
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Mortgage delinquencies started climbing in 2024 after having declined steadily for more than three years until then, according to a study by property intelligence company Cotality published last summer, as more people were falling behind on their monthly payments—especially in states such as Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia.
In the first quarter of 2025, according to the company, the average national property tax delinquency rate—which refers to homeowners who are at least one month behind on payments—was at the highest point since 2018.
During his campaign trail, Trump vowed to bring mortgage rates down to make home-buying more affordable, but, for the past year, he has been struggling to keep his promise, blaming the Federal Reserve and its chair Jerome Powell for not cutting interest rates sooner and deeper.
What To Know
On November 8, Pulte suggested that the Trump administration was working on introducing a 50-year mortgage, which he described as "a complete game changer."
Trump had seemed on board with the proposal, publishing on his social media platform Truth Social an image comparing President Delano Roosevelt’s introduction of a 30-year mortgage—now the industry’s standard—to his future introduction of a 50-year one.
Only two months later, Pulte said that the proposal had been put aside by the White House. "I think we have other priorities," he told reporters on Friday.
The proposal seems to have been put aside after economists proved widely skeptical of it, highlighting its drawbacks rather than its potential benefits.
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The appeal of a 50-year mortgage would be "to offer lower monthly payments to homebuyers and break up the log jam of the current housing market which has struggled in terms of sales pace all year," Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner previously told Newsweek.
But such a move would result "in almost double the interest payments of a 30-year mortgage and a longer path to meaningful home equity," the economist said, "and that the result of subsidizing home demand without increasing home supply could be an increase to home prices that negates the potential savings."
"A 50-year mortgage basically means you’re paying mostly interest for decades before you really own your home. Most people sell their homes long before 50 years, so they won’t make much money back when they sell," Michael Ryan, a finance expert and the founder of MichaelRyanMoney.com, previously told Newsweek.
What People Are Saying
Pulte told CNBC on Friday: "We are looking at everything. We presented the president with anywhere between 30 to 50 different options. It will be up to the president to decide which, if any, of those he wants to do."
Berner said in a statement this week: "It was a bad idea, and it went away. Nobody wanted to build equity that slowly and pay so much interest to the bank. Renting continues to get more affordable, so people don’t have to feel so desperate as to jump into a bad deal."
What Happens Next
The Trump administration seems to have moved in other directions in his attempt to lower home-buying and homeownership costs for Americans.
Last week, Trump announced he was directing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage bonds to lower home loan rates, starting with a $3 billion buy.
The president also announced he was going to ban corporate investors from buying single-family homes in the U.S. residential market.
Pulte said Friday that he feels "very confident" that Trump will announce "a couple of very good ideas" on how to improve affordability in the U.S. housing market at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later this month.
"And then we’ll see from there what he wants to do," Pulte said.
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