30-Year Mortgages Are Still a Sweet Deal—For People who Already Have Them
2023-12-05
The thirty-year mortgage, of all things, came under attack in a piece by Ben Casselman in the New York Times. The three-decade fixed rate loan is, of course, a creation of the government and adds constant fuel to the US housing market. The title of Casselman’s piece calls the most popular debt instrument for home purchases “weird,” “cushy,” and “old.” He blames low interest rate thirty-year fixed loans for the broken housing market.
Casselman points out that nearly 95 percent of US mortgages have fixed interest rates, and of those, more than three-quarters are for thirty-year terms. Once upon a time, homebuyers could only borrow half the purchase price for a home and that loan would be due in three years. The Federal Housing Association changed all of that in the 1930s.
Casselman writes,