Homeowners vote red. Renters vote blue.
Will President Donald Trump’s 50-year mortgage make a red voter out of you?
That is what the president hoped for on Saturday, when he posted the idea of stretching out the customary 30-year repayment terms for home mortgages to 50 years.
Turns out, that idea is smoke and mirrors. But at least Trump is recognizing that home affordability is a real crisis, not fake news.
“Affordability” is the campaign pledge that produced big wins on election day, and most of the winners were Democrats.
Affording a home is increasingly out of reach. The median age of the first-time homebuyer just hit 40 years old, according to the National Association of Realtors. Many women are worried about hitting the brick wall of no longer being able to bear children, and they still can’t afford a starter home.
In 1991, the median age of someone buying their first home was 28, but in the last few years, it’s become an impossible dream for people even in their 30s. The implications are huge, not only for starting a family but also for voting.
Renters favor Democrats by almost two to one, according to data from the American National Election Studies. Homeowners are twice as likely as renters to identify as “strongly Republican,” reports Aziz Sunderji, an economist who analyzed several decades of this data.
Starting in the 1970s, renters were slightly more inclined to vote Democratic than Republican, but in the last 20 years, they have swung sharply leftward.
Making homeownership possible is not only good policy. For Republicans, it’s smart politics.
In New York City, people in their 30s who are earning good money – as much as $120,00 or more, according to economics reporter John Carney – cannot make the leap to homeownership. In the mayoral election, strong support for democratic socialist mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani came from Brooklyn neighborhoods inhabited by “downwardly mobile professionals” who are settling for cramped rental apartments and roommates. They have “no hope of buying a home,” Carney reports.
Scalded by the election results across the nation last week, Trump floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage on Truth Social, with side-by-side pictures of himself and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who devised the 30-year mortgage after the Depression to relieve homeowners.
The 50-year mortgage is a nonstarter because it’s prohibited by Dodd-Frank, among other reasons. But there are realistic steps to help first-time buyers get into the market.
Lowering mortgage rates will help. Many current homeowners, especially the elderly, who would like to downsize, are locked into their current homes because they’re financed at low rates. If they sell and buy a new property, they’ll be stuck with higher interest rates. So they’re waiting, keeping urgently needed inventory off the market.
Trump has been all over Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. He’s already done so twice, in September and October, and some predict another hike in December.
But long-term, this is a problem of supply and demand. To increase the supply of new homes for sale, builders need to feel confident that buyers will be able to pay the price. At the end of October, builder confidence was 37 out of 100, according to the National Association of Home Builders. What will boost their confidence? Job growth and consumer confidence.
With the government shutdown ending, job market data will soon be available again. Builders will be watching.
Meanwhile, politicians will have their eyes on the polls. Behind the poll numbers is widespread discontent that the American dream of homeownership is far out of reach. Republicans hoping to make gains in next year’s midterm elections had better pay attention.
Meanwhile, Democrats know where their votes are: renters. In many states, Democrats are pushing towns with mostly single-family housing to build apartment buildings, including units to be rented to low-income families. Trump identifies this as the Democrats’ “war on the suburbs.”
In Connecticut, leftists aligned with Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont are ramming through a bill this week that mandates how much affordable rental housing every region of the state will build. Forcing small Connecticut towns like Easton or Wilton to build apartment buildings and accommodate a large influx of renters will push up property taxes, as the towns have to build sewer lines, bus lines, and more schools. The higher property taxes go, the further out of reach buying a single-family home is, especially to first-time homebuyers.
But Democrats are turning a deaf ear to these objections. They know the fundamental truth. The more renters move into a red town, the more likely that town is to flip blue.
Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman & Founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.
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In 2001 I purchased a very nice 2300 sq ft house for $203,000. Every year my house was appraised by the county at a higher value so they could charge higher property taxes. As my house was appraised at a higher value – it real-estate value became the county appraisal amount. Now my house is appraised at $540,000 dollars and taxed for that amount and would be listed at the amount. So it seems to me that the reason housing prices have gone up is due to the county appraising them at a higher value so they can tax them at a higher rate.
The apartment building boom has been in high gear in towns and small cities surrounding Phoenix, AZ during the last 5 or 6 years. I think the developers were planning on HUD and illegal aliens for rental assistance to make them profitable. The building of these complexes far outpaced the roads, water, sewer systems and electrical grid and is taxing all of these utilities. Schools are facing overcrowding, and the building frenzy continues.
Deporting as many illegals as possible will help douse the greed of these developers who were banking on government assistance to pay the rent. Continue on, Trump Administration!
50 year mortgages will increase bank profits and keep people in debt forever.
I have an idea. Why not eliminate all property taxes in all states, do away with all toll roads in the country, pay max of 15% tax on income, repeal obamacare so we may get doctor/patient care without government stealing from us, and government stay out of student loans. Reduce taxes – not longer-timed mortgages, and no $2,000 rebates. Also, train and re-train our own people for jobs/careers. We are just as smart, capable, and willing to do a better job than any foreigner. We want captialism, free markets, instead of our own politicians selling us out.
Are dems. planning the housing Chinese style, hundreds of of people living in tenements, while elites will live on their estates undisturbed.
Housing will be affordable again if all the illegals are returned.
Getting the house was easy; getting the girl is impossible.
With today’s prices, and with a straight face, mortgage dealers are telling us a 50 year mortgage is the answer, WTF was the question?!
A fifty-year mortgage would lower monthly payments but would double the pay-off amount on the loan. There would need to be a provision to allow borrowers to pay extra principal and/or pay off the balance early. People need financial education [rather than sex indoctrination] to learn how to use money wisely! I saw on Babylon Bee the satiric headline “Dave Ramsey has heart attack after learning of a 50-year mortgage.”
It has only been in the last couple of decades I haven’t been a renter but I never was a Democrat.
In California, at least, prices of single family homes have been driven up by large corporations, which plan to convert them to apartments. Allowing apartments to be built anywhere, while also forbidding anyone (including the cites themselves) from fighting it, is Newsom’s idea for addressing the housing crises. He also changed laws that required sufficient parking to be provided with any new developments. Instead, here in Long Beach, the narrowed roads to put in bicycle lanes, and provided easy to rent electric scooters, saying those transportation methods took the place of parking spaces. I don’t recall seeing two bicycles in any bicycle lane at the same time, in the many years since the roads were narrowed. And I very rarely see the scooters being used, but do see them abandoned all across town.
Few seniors citizens use bicycles or scooters.sounds like age discrimination to me.
It dems are mostly renters, why build more apartments? Why not more houses under 200k? That’s something that could be affordable. Most houses being built here in ND are in the 750kfown to maybe 350k. Also I question, do Republicans want freedom therefore want a home rather apartment, and dems want community run environment?