reidtandy's cast | Paragraph

Nov 10, 2025

Reading Abundance & they actually have a nice little section on the 30-year mortgage:

The 30-year mortgage was possible only because the federal government guaranteed it. They claim that 30-year mortgage (which truly is kind of a crazy thing when you think about it) would never have stood up in a free market w/o gov't support.

They also point to Japan (Tokyo in particular) trying 50 – 100 year mortgages to make housing more “affordable”, which led to a crazy spike in property values, then a big time collapse in values that haven't recovered three decades later.

Agree w/ @brandondonnelly.eth that longer mortgages will likely lead to higher property values & more risk in the housing market.

How long is too long for a mortgage?

The US just announced that they are working on a plan to introduce 50-year mortgages. I don't know what this plan entails, but my first reaction to the headline was: “Yeah, this is a bad idea.” But then I thought to myself, why is a 50-year amortization period too long? And is there any magic to 25- and 30-year mortgages? At the most basic level, you could think of it this way: the average life expectancy of both sexes in America is currently 78.4 years. That means the average American would ...