The Solution To The Housing Crisis Is.........

[Drizzay 746]

I worked in the Sub-Prime world back in 2005-2011.  What a world it was!

 

Greedy brokers and maybe the dumbest of dumb American borrowers.

[Ron_Artest 2,240]

Maybe we can combine a 50 year variable rate balloon payment with zero down, no work requirement and 12 months no PMI.  What could go wrong?

[TimHauck 3,312]

1 hour ago, jonnyutah said:

Maybe we could change the terms a bit. Maybe you pay a little more, you dont have to pay for repairs or lawn care and you still dont gain any equity. We could call it house borrowing or something. 

 

Just deport all the illegals right?  That will surely bring down prices of $500k+ houses in the suburbs right?

lol

[Fnord 2,526]

While this isn't necessarily in the same vein as what is being discussed, I think 3D printed homes are probably the wave of the future. Once they can scale up operations, find the "magic formula" for building materials, and tradespeople get some experience working on them, they seem like a valid part of making home ownership easier.

Understanding @easilyscan's loathing of getting gov't involved, I still don't see how any realistic options don't include gov't subsidies and probably some kind of restrictions on who gets to buy "affordable" housing. Companies like VRBO and AB&B are greatly exacerbating the problem by making it more profitable to own investment properties, further shutting out first time home buyers.

[jonnyutah 550]

4 hours ago, TimHauck said:

Just deport all the illegals right?  That will surely bring down prices of $500k+ houses in the suburbs right?

lol

"Omg look at me everybody, I dont understand upward buying pressure on necessary items!"

-timhauck

[Drizzay 746]

5 hours ago, Ron_Artest said:

Maybe we can combine a 50 year variable rate balloon payment with zero down, no work requirement and 12 months no PMI.  What could go wrong?

Interest only too!

Interest only Balloon Notes as a 2nd mortgage were quite popular with the sub-prime borrowers back in 2006.

[jonnyutah 550]

Lets get rid of the 620 credit score minimum!

[nobody 2,889]

Japan was offering 100 year mortgages back in the day when their housing prices skyrocketed.  I don't know if they still do that today.

It's all bad.  People need to stop buying stuff they can't afford and housing prices will stop going up.

[Strike 6,023]

I don't really have anything specifically against 50 year mortgages, although I did run the numbers on a mortgage calculator today and for a $320k loan at 6%, the difference in monthly payment going from 30 year to 50 year was about $200, from about 2k to 2.2k.  The total payments went from about 800k to about 1.2 million over the life of the loan.  This is consistent with numbers someone posted up above.  So the relief gained from adding 20 years to a loan just isn't that significant, and the total amount paid is pretty significant.   Also, adding more people to the home buying market will likely result in higher prices to buy a home which may offset and financial benefit from adding 20 years to the length of the mortgage.  

That said, I've always been a proponent of buying vs. renting for the following reasons:

1)  If you rent you gain nothing.  Real estate pretty much always increases in value over time so unless you're bailing in a year the risk is almost non-existent and you usually gain equity over your time in a purchase that you don't in a rental. 

2)  You gain cost certainty with a purchase that you don't in a rental.  I worked with a kid who was renting and waiting for the PERFECT starter home.  He had his wish list and didn't want to buy until he found it.  In the meantime he lived in a one bedroom apartment in Denver during a period of time when prices were going through the roof, both for rentals and purchases.  He could have easily purchased a one bedroom condo equivalent or better than his one bedroom apartment but because it wasn't his perfect starter home he didn't want to do that and just kept moving every year when his lease expired and the rent went up too much for his taste.  

The reality is, we have the most incoming immigration of any country on Earth.  This includes our legal immigration pathways.  It's not just the illegals.  So we're constantly squeezing our housing markets, especially in the more desirable cities to live in.  We either build more or curb immigration to take that pressure off the market.  

[HellToupee 2,232]

My old buddy Josh dropped a video on this and has me rethinking my knee jerk reaction to this

 

 

[TBayXXXVII 2,669]

On 11/10/2025 at 8:06 PM, easilyscan said:

If you made made 50 year mortgages an option, it would substantially increase the number of qualified buyers.

Wouldn't this just be a signal for sellers to raise prices ?

 

 

How would it?  The average cost of a house just 6 years ago was around $380k.  If you needed say, 5% to put down on that house to get the loan, you needed about $19k, right?  Today, that average cost of a house is around $510k, so you'd need $25.5k.  If people can't afford $25.5k NOW, how would a 50-year mortgage generate such a demand, that more people would want to buy homes that they still can't afford and make the cost go higher and making them less affordable?

[nobody 2,889]

5 hours ago, HellToupee said:

My old buddy Josh dropped a video on this and has me rethinking my knee jerk reaction to this

 

 

Is that a parody?  He said the payment is the same for 30 and 50, but the 50 is good?  The 30 would be just as good for the exact same reasons and you'd actually have a little equity in the property in 10 years on the 30 year unlike the 50 year.

So why would you ever get the 50 instead of the 30?

[easilyscan 1,014]

https://babylonbee.com/news/banks-now-requiring-your-grandkids-to-co-sign-your-50-year-mortgage

[The Real timschochet 7,474]

Probably more important than the 50 year mortgage thing, because it’s already been decided on, Fannie Mae has lowered its credit score requirement from 620 which was imposed as a minimum after 2008: 

https://www.housingwire.com/articles/fannie-mae-credit-score-update/

Conservatives like @easilyscan blame government involvement for our past problems. But surely this was a good restriction. Now once again there are sure to be tons of subprime loans. And we can look forward to another crash, and probably another bailout.