50-Year Mortgages in Idaho: Useful Tool for House Hackers or Generational Debt Trap?
Could a 50 year mortgage be the tool you've been waiting for?
If you’ve been anywhere near the news lately, you’ve seen the buzz about 50-year mortgages.
The idea is simple: stretch your mortgage from 30 years to 50 years so your payment goes down and homeownership feels more “affordable.” The Trump administration is pushing the idea as one possible fix for high prices and rates, but even they’ve admitted it would only reduce payments slightly.
On paper, that sounds like a win. In real life, for most people, a 50-year mortgage looks a lot more like generational debt than generational wealth.
What a 50-year mortgage actually does
A 50-year mortgage is just a normal fixed-rate mortgage stretched over 600 payments instead of 360. You still borrow money, you still pay interest and principal, you just do it for half a century. Analysts who’ve run the math are all saying the same thing: the payment drop is small, but the lifetime cost is huge. UBS found that on a “typical” home, a 50-year mortgage only cuts the monthly payment by about 5%, but you end up paying interest equal to roughly 225% of the home’s price if you keep it for the full term.
In other words, you don’t just buy your house. You also buy a couple more houses… for the bank.
On top of that, you build equity painfully slowly. After 10 years on a 50-year mortgage, you’ve only paid off about 4% of the loan, compared with closer to 16% on a 30-year. So if life happens and you need to sell, refinance, or tap a HELOC, there just isn’t much there for you to work with. And if you know Boise TurnKey and the way we coach our clients to grow and build portfolios, building equity as fast as possible is TRULY what makes all of the difference. Much more difference than a payment that is 5% lower.
The Boise problem it doesn’t solve
Will this make Boise, Meridian, or Nampa housing actually cheaper? No.
A longer loan might help a few buyers qualify for “more house” on paper or make the payment feel a little friendlier each month. But it doesn’t add any homes to the market, lower construction costs, or magically fix our inventory problem. That’s why so many housing experts are calling it a “band-aid” or a distraction from the real issue: we don’t have enough housing supply.
If anything, letting people stretch to 50 years can push prices up over time, because more people can chase the same limited number of homes. So we’re not really fixing affordability; we’re just changing how long we’re in debt. And how long our kids are in debt. And their kids.
Investor edge cases vs real people
Boise TurnKey works with a lot of investors, so I’ll admit there might be a tiny sliver of situations where someone uses a 50-year mortgage as a temporary tool—say, on a value-add project where they have a clear plan to refinance or exit once they’ve increased the property’s income and value.
But that’s not how these loans are being sold in the headlines. It’s being pitched as an “affordability solution” for normal buyers and first-timers. And for them, the trade-off is rough: slightly lower payments today in exchange for much slower equity and way more interest over time. More debt, less freedom.
For the average homebuyer in Boise—or the small investor who just wants a couple of solid rentals—that’s not the lever I want to pull.
Better ways to make real estate work for you
Instead of signing up for 600 months of payments, We’d rather see you use tools that actually move you toward financial freedom:
- Buy smart and add value: Older homes with unfinished basements, ADU potential, or cosmetic upside can grow into great investments without exotic loan terms.
- House-hack creatively: Rent out a room, a basement, or an ADU so the property helps cover the payment.
- Use a normal 30-year mortgage well: You can always make extra principal payments once your cash flow improves and effectively turn a 30-year loan into something much shorter—without locking into a 50-year obligation. National Mortgage News+1
Those are the kinds of moves that actually build equity, change lives and create options instead of just stretching the debt out for literally the rest of your life.
Our take—and what to do next
Our whole business is built on this belief: average people can absolutely use real estate to change their family tree. But there’s a difference between smart leverage and forever debt.
If 50-year mortgages eventually show up in Idaho, my honest take is simple: for most people, they’re a bad trade. The small monthly savings just isn’t worth the slower equity, the extra interest, and the risk of carrying a mortgage well into retirement.
If you’re wondering, “Okay, then what should I do?”—that’s the conversation I actually like having. If you want to talk through your goals, your budget, and real options in Boise that build wealth, not just longer debt, let’s grab a coffee. Email us at Info@BoiseTurnKey.com and we will send over a couple of times to chat.
No hype, no pressure—just straight talk about what will actually work for you.
Quick disclaimer: I’m not a CPA, attorney, or financial advisor. This isn’t tax, legal, or investment advice—just perspective from someone who lives and breathes Boise real estate. Please run your specific situation past your own professional advisors before making big decisions.
Happy Investing!
