By Jaydee Sheppard November 11, 2025
If you’ve been following housing news lately, you’ve probably heard about the idea of a 50 year mortgage. It’s being discussed as a way to make homeownership more affordable by lowering monthly payments and stretching the loan over five decades. This is my second blog on this topic, but I want to expand on my last thoughts. You can read that blog at https://www.jaydeesheppard.com/the-truth-about-the-50-year-mortgage-pros-cons-for-housing-affordability/
At first, it sounds like a helpful solution. But as someone who works every day with families in Placer County, I think we need to look deeper. Because while longer loans might help people buy homes, they could quietly weaken one of the most powerful tools for building family wealth in America: real estate.
Real Estate Is How Placer County Builds Generational Wealth
Here in Placer County, real estate has always been more than just a place to live. It’s how families create stability, opportunity, and long-term progress.
From Lincoln and Rocklin to Loomis and Roseville, many families have built wealth the same way. They buy a home, pay it down, improve it, and pass it on. Over time, those homes become the backbone of local prosperity.
Homeownership builds equity, and equity builds opportunity. Families use it to help their kids with college, start a business, or retire comfortably. That’s the cycle that has lifted generations here.
A 50 year mortgage, though, changes that story.
A 50 Year Mortgage Slows Wealth Building
With a traditional 15 or 30 year mortgage, each payment chips away at the balance you owe. As the years go on, more of that payment goes toward the principal, which means your ownership stake grows faster.
With a 50 year mortgage, that progress slows dramatically. For the first 10 to 15 years, almost all of your payment goes toward interest. So after a decade or more, you’ve barely made a dent in what you owe.
Yes, your monthly payment is smaller, but your equity grows much more slowly. In simple terms, you’re paying longer for the same home and building less wealth while you do it.
That matters. Because the faster you build equity, the faster you build options. And options are what create generational wealth.
How This Impacts Placer County Families
In communities across Placer County, home equity has been the main source of family wealth. It’s what allows people to move up, reinvest, and give back.
If mortgage timelines stretch to 50 years, that upward movement slows down. Families may carry debt longer, earn equity slower, and pass on less to their children.
That could mean:
- Fewer homes passed down debt-free
- Less money available for education or investment
- A growing wealth gap between older homeowners and younger buyers
And when you zoom out, that trend doesn’t just affect individual families. It affects entire communities.
The Illusion a 50 year mortgage gives of Affordability
A longer mortgage doesn’t make homes cheaper. It just spreads out the cost.
Yes, the monthly payment feels lighter, but the total cost of ownership skyrockets. And if more people suddenly qualify for larger loans, demand increases. When demand goes up but supply stays tight, prices rise.
That’s what happened in countries like Spain and Japan that experimented with longer-term mortgages. Home prices climbed, but true affordability didn’t improve. Many families ended up paying more over time and building less wealth.
So while a 50 year mortgage might sound like a solution, it can easily turn into a slow drain on family wealth.
What Equity Looks Like for Homeowners Today
Even without 50-year mortgages, homeowners already hold incredible amounts of equity. According to Bankrate, the average American homeowner with a mortgage has about $302,000 in equity. Nearly half of U.S. homeowners are considered “equity rich,” meaning they owe less than half of what their home is worth.
That’s the power of equity — it’s how everyday families build long-term stability.
Now imagine if that equity took 20 extra years to build. That’s the concern with extending mortgage terms to 50 years. You may still “own,” but you’re owning less of what really matters.
My Take: Equity Should Still Be the Goal
As a Realtor and strategist, I want families to own homes, but more importantly, I want them to own their equity.
Homeownership should move you closer to financial freedom, not keep you tied to a mortgage for life. I understand why people are drawn to lower monthly payments, but we have to think about what we lose in the long run.
It’s equity, not access, that builds true generational wealth.
When my clients ask me if a 50 year mortgage is a good idea, I tell them:
“If your goal is to buy a home, it might help. But if your goal is to build wealth, it might not.”
That’s the difference between owning a home and letting your home own you.
A Better Path to Real Affordability
If we really want to make housing more affordable, we need bigger solutions. Stretching out a loan is a short-term fix for a long-term problem.
We need more homes built, better zoning flexibility, and policies that help first-time buyers compete.
I also believe we need to take a closer look at corporate ownership. I’m not a fan of large corporations buying up single-family homes and turning them into rentals. Every time that happens, a family loses the chance to buy and build equity.
That’s not building community. That’s extracting wealth from it.
Real affordability starts with ownership staying in the hands of real people — families, teachers, small business owners, and retirees who love where they live.
When homes are owned by people who actually live in them, the wealth stays local. It circulates through schools, small businesses, and neighborhoods. That’s how communities like Placer County thrive.
Final Thoughts
The 50 year mortgage might sound like an affordability fix, but in areas like ours, it could quietly change the way families build wealth for generations.
Real estate has been our greatest wealth builder. Let’s protect that by focusing on policies that strengthen ownership, not debt.
Because when homes stay in the hands of the people who live in them, we keep our communities strong, our opportunities open, and our future bright.
One Response
A valuable contribution to the topic.