Here's Who Wins If Trump's 50-Year Mortgages Come to Market

Key Points

• As the housing crisis drags on, the home price to median household income ratio is at an all-time high. 
• President Trump has proposed 50-year mortgages as a potential solution, but analysis shows they significantly increase lifetime interest payments.
• Mortgage and hybrid REITs like Starwood Property Trust and Annaly Capital Management stand to benefit if such long-term mortgages gain traction.

The affordability crisis in the United States has reached record levels. From the cost of used cars to credit card APRs and even ground beef, numerous measures of Americans’ financial stress are at or near all-time highs. 

Housing is no exception. 

Surging real estate prices have provided a boon to the bottom lines of homebuilders, producing outsized returns for shareholders of companies like Lennar NYSE: LEN, PulteGroup NYSE: PHM and D.R. Horton NYSE: DHI. Since the start of the pandemic, those stocks have gained more than 208%, 316% and 401%, respectively. 

But for prospective homeowners, the challenges to ownership continue to mount, and the dream is increasingly deferred. 

Last month, the National Association of Realtors reported that the share of homes being sold to first-time buyers hit a historic low of 21%, while the median age of a first-time homebuyer hit a record high of 40.  

Those issues haven’t gone unnoticed. In early November, President Trump publicly floated the concept of 50-year mortgages. The goal? Lower monthly payments for buyers otherwise priced out of the market.

Critics point to numerous drawbacks, chiefly among them that the interest on those products could be significantly higher. But for a select group of real estate investment trusts (REITs), the payoff could be immeasurable. 

Trump’s 50-Year Solution to the Housing Crisis

The president’s proposal comes at a time when the home price-to-median-income ratio sits just under its 2022 all-time high and exceeds levels reached during the height of the housing bubble.

Historically, U.S. home prices have been five times the median annual household income. From 1964, when the oldest baby boomers turned 18, to 2001, the ratio never surpassed its historical average of five. 

However, since 2001, a lot has changed. In April 2022, it reached 7.12. At the end of August 2025, when data was last available, the ratio was 7.04. That level far exceeds historical norms and suggests that most median-income earners cannot afford a typical home without taking on significant financial strain.

Meanwhile, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index—a composite of single-family home prices—sits less than 1% from its all-time high set in February 2025. 

Trump’s proposal aims to accelerate first-time buyers’ ability to enter the market. But while the proposal of 50-year mortgages seems rooted in solving the affordability crisis, the numbers tell a different story.  

50-Year Mortgages Reduce Monthly Costs but Double Interest

According to the latest government data, the median sales price for homes in the United States was $410,800 in August 2025. At the time of writing, the average 30-year fixed rate mortgage is 6.23%. 

Assuming a hypothetical homebuyer made a 20% down payment on a median-priced home with that mortgage rate—a conservative assumption given that rates for 50-year mortgages would likely be higher as banks would be assuming more risk—the average monthly savings would be $233.13:

• 30-year fixed: $2,019.22 per month
• 50-year fixed: $1,786.09 per month

However, over the lifetime of that loan, the interest homeowners would pay to the bank would nearly double from $398,279.24 to $743,016.92—a roughly 87% increase. 

Another issue is that mortgage interest is infamously front-loaded. Amortization schedules prioritize the banks being paid before homeowners can build substantial equity in their homes. With 50-year mortgages, a larger amount of each monthly payment would go towards interest earlier in the schedule. 

In short, 50-year mortgage products are unlikely to help homebuyers over the long-term, but they’re very likely to help REITs involved in loan origination, mortgage-backed securities and mortgage servicing.  

Who Benefits From Homebuyers Nearly Doubling Their Mortgage Interest?

Hybrid REITs, mortgage REITs and their shareholders stand to win if 50-year mortgages clear regulatory hurdles. These trusts, including Annaly Capital Management NYSE: NLY—one of the nation’s largest—and Starwood Property Trust Stock NYSE: STWD, generate income through investments in mortgage-related assets. 

Specifically, their core businesses involve the acquisition, financing and management of residential mortgage-backed securities and other real estate debt instruments. If 50-year mortgages come to fruition, stocks like STWD and NLY will be beneficiaries of those reformed homebuying instruments. 

That should be of particular interest to income investors as REITs are required by law to distribute at least 90% of their taxable income to shareholders in the form of dividends. In Starwood’s case, that dividend yields 10.46%, or $1.92 per share annually. For Annaly, that yield is 12.26%, or $2.80 per share annually.