50-Year Mortgages: Trump's 'Bad Deal' Gets Respectful Hearing From Press

Janine Jackson

Is a 50-year mortgage a good idea? CNN (11/11/25) tells readers—maybe!

Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte soft-launched the idea that housing mortgages should be for 50 years, rather than the standard 30 years. The palace intrigue (Politico, 11/10/25) that erupted after his announcement suggests the reveal was perhaps mistimed, but that doesn’t mean it’s not reflective of the sort of policy the Trump White House is intent on.

And though the idea of extending payments over time under the guise of making home ownership more accessible seems to have landed poorly with economists right, left and center, much of corporate news media were willing to give it a reflexively respectful whirl.

Trump tried to walk back the importance of the 50-year mortgage plan he’d already promoted online, and that Pulte called a “complete game changer”—telling Fox (Yahoo News, 11/10/25) he just thought it might “help a little bit.” This was as some media were already pointing out that the scheme would mean nominally lower monthly costs, but also that it would take people much longer to actually own their homes—as in, so much longer that they’d be dead first.

Reuters (11/11/25), among others, noted that “conservative lawmakers, influencers in Trump's Make America Great Again Movement, and economists were among those to dismiss the idea,” while the Wall Street Journal editorial board (11/11/25) went straight to “A 50-Year Mortgage Is a Bad Deal.”

Meanwhile, over at NPR (11/12/25), we got “Three Questions About Trump's 50-Year Mortgage Plan” and at CNN (11/11/25), “Trump Just Floated a 50-Year Mortgage. Is That a Good Idea?”

'Leveraged, exposed and beholden'

Stacey Patton (NewsBreak, 11/10/25): "A 50-year mortgage doesn’t just delay ownership, it transforms it into a lifelong lease.... You could spend your entire adult life paying for a house you never truly own."

Author Stacey Patton broke it down for NewsBreak (11/10/25), writing that—along with the elimination of minimum credit score requirements, in favor of “holistic risk assessments”—the 50-year mortgage plan, while dressed up as “reform or a step toward inclusivity in a system that has long penalized Black and brown borrowers,” is in reality part of an effort to normalize permanent indebtedness.

“The promise of homeownership,” Patton wrote,

is being transformed into a subscription model for life that disproportionately ensnares young people of color already burdened by stagnant wages, student loans and rising living costs.

As important as the new mechanism is the old logic of extractive racial capitalism:

Instead of redlining them out, the new system pulls them in by offering entry points wrapped in the rhetoric of equality while ensuring they remain leveraged, exposed and beholden.

Shielding the propertied class

Eric Horowtiz (FAIR.org, 10/21/22): "Corporate media’s eagerness to peddle narratives favorable to the propertied class is to be expected, since many establishment outlets have a vested interest in the continued growth of housing prices."

It’s not new for corporate media to have trouble finding the humane angle on housing. As Eric Horowitz wrote for FAIR (10/21/22) in 2022, much of Big Media’s coverage of the housing crisis

focuses on what are presented as three great evils: that landlords of supposedly modest means are being squeezed; that individuals and families living without homes destroy the aesthetics of cities; and that…people without homes pose a threat to the lives and property of law-abiding citizens.

These narratives aren’t just punching down; they’re misdirection, shielding the propertied class from scrutiny regarding a crisis of its own making—from which it derives immense profits—while blame is assigned to over-burdened renters and people who are unhoused.

And yes, it all has something if not everything to do with the fact that many corporate media outlets have deep financial stakes in real estate. You’ll never go wrong by following the money.

Featured Image: Donald Trump promoting the 50-year mortgage idea on Truth Social (11/8/25).