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The Trump administration is preparing to roll out a sweeping new housing initiative — a 50-year fixed-rate mortgage designed to make homeownership more accessible for working- and middle-class Americans. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte confirmed Saturday that the plan is actively in development, calling it a “complete game changer.”

“Thanks to President Trump, we are indeed working on The 50 Year Mortgage — a complete game changer,” Pulte announced on X, posting a graphic from Trump’s Truth Social page that contrasted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 30-year New Deal mortgage program with Trump’s 50-year proposal. FDR introduced the 30-year fixed mortgage in the 1930s to lift Americans out of the Great Depression. Nearly a century later, Trump is positioning the 50-year loan as a modern counterpart — a bold step to restore the American Dream for a generation shut out of the housing market.

The proposal comes amid record-high housing prices and interest rates that have pushed the average age of first-time homebuyers to 40 — the oldest ever recorded, according to the National Association of Realtors. In decades past, first-time buyers were often in their 20s or early 30s.

Mortgage data also shows how desperate buyers have become: adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) applications, once a marginal share of the market, now account for roughly 10% of all applications — far above the post-2008 average of 6%, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The surge reflects how buyers are stretching to afford homes amid high monthly payments. A 50-year fixed mortgage would significantly reduce those monthly costs, though borrowers would pay more interest over the long term.

While details are still being finalized, the plan underscores Trump’s focus on affordability and opportunity — reviving the spirit of Roosevelt’s 30-year mortgage for a new era of Americans chasing the dream of homeownership.

From the Fraser Institute

By Jake Fuss and Austin Thompson

The Carney government’s first budget tabled on Tuesday promises to “supercharge” homebuilding across the country. But Ottawa’s flagship housing initiative—a new federal agency, Build Canada Homes (BCH)—risks “supercharging” federal debt instead while doing little to boost construction.

The budget accurately diagnoses the root cause of Canada’s housing shortage—costly red tape on housing projects, sky-high taxes on homebuilders, and weak productivity growth in the construction sector. But the proposed cure, BCH, does nothing to fix these problems despite receiving a five-year budget of $13 billion.

BCH’s core mandate is to build and finance affordable housing projects. But this mission is muddled by competing political priorities to preference Canadian building materials and prioritize “sustainable” construction materials. Any product that needs a government preference to be used is clearly not the most cost-effective option. The result—BCH’s “affordable” homes will cost more than they needed to, meaning more tax dollars wasted.

Ottawa claims BCH will improve construction productivity by “generating demand” (read: splashing out tax dollars) for factory-built housing. This logic is faulty—where factory-built housing is a cost-effective and desirable option, private developers are already building it. “Prioritizing” factory-built homes amounts to Ottawa trying to pick winners and losers—a strategy that reliably wastes taxpayer dollars. The civil servants running BCH lack the market knowledge and cost-cutting incentives of private homebuilders, who are far better positioned to identify which technologies will deliver the affordable homes Canadians need.

The government also insists BCH projects will attract more private investment for housing. The opposite is more likely—BCH projects will compete with private developers for limited investment dollars and construction labour. Ottawa’s intrusion into housing development could ultimately mean fewer private-sector housing projects—those driven by the real needs of homebuyers and renters, not the Carney government’s political priorities.

Despite its huge budget and broad mandate, BCH still lacks clear goals. Its only commitment so far is to “build affordable housing at scale,” with no concrete targets for how many new homes or how affordable they’ll be. Without measurable outcomes, neither Ottawa nor taxpayers will know whether BCH delivers value for money.

You can’t solve Canada’s housing crisis with yet another federal program. Ottawa should resist the temptation to act as a housing developer and instead create fiscal and economic conditions that allow the private sector to build more homes.

Jake Fuss

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute

Austin Thompson

Senior Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute