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The montage of the American Dream begins with a front door and a mortgage. President Donald Trump is correct to say that the dream is slipping out of reach for too many families. Home prices have skyrocketed, mortgage rates have doubled since 2021, and young Americans are finding it more challenging than ever to buy a home and put down roots.
So it’s no surprise that the administration is exploring new ways to "make housing affordable again." One of those ideas, a 50-year fixed-rate mortgage, promises smaller monthly payments by stretching out the life of the loan.
But the problem isn’t the rates or lengths of mortgages; it’s the cost of the house.
President Donald Trump is correct to say that the American dream of homeownership is slipping out of reach for too many families. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Extending loan terms just spreads the pain over more years. Longer mortgages might lower the monthly bill, but they multiply the total debt. On a $400,000 loan at 6% interest, a 50-year mortgage means paying roughly $1.26 million over the life of the loan, more than triple the original amount. After 20 years, you’d still owe almost $350,000.
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The real challenge is that the government has made it too expensive to build and buy homes in the first place. Washington and local governments pile on costs at every step through tariffs, taxes, fees and endless red tape. Builders can’t build affordably when they’re forced to navigate an obstacle course of regulation and delay.
Even Bill Pulte, President Trump’s housing chief and a longtime homebuilder himself, has acknowledged how high interest rates and housing costs are "really hurting people." He’s right about the pain families are feeling, but the solution is lower costs. As any economist can tell you, affordability begins with more supply, not more subsidies.
Mackenzie Bishop, a homebuilder with Abrazos Homes in Albuquerque, recently laid out the math in blunt terms. Local taxes and fees add more than $40,000 to the cost of every new home before a single nail is hammered. Add property tax increases of 50 to 70% on multifamily projects, and new construction grinds to a halt. Multiply that across the country, and it’s no wonder builders can’t keep up with demand or why the homes that do get built are out of reach for working families.
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It’s the same story nationwide. Tariffs have raised the prices of building materials like lumber, steel and concrete. Meanwhile, permitting and environmental reviews can delay projects for years, driving up financing costs and draining the incentive to build at all.
These are the hidden taxes that keep America’s housing supply artificially scarce, and that scarcity – not the length of the mortgage – is what drives prices higher.
Even as inflation has cooled from its peak, prices are still rising about 3% a year. "Sticky" costs like rent, insurance and shelter remain stubbornly high. That means families’ paychecks are stretched thin before they even start saving for a down payment. The Federal Reserve may eventually cut interest rates, but unless we fix the underlying supply problem, housing will remain unaffordable no matter the loan term.
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The good news is that conservatives already know how to fix this. Instead of inventing new forms of debt, we can make it easier and cheaper to build the homes Americans need. That means streamlining permitting and cutting the bureaucracy that slows construction, eliminating tariffs that drive up the price of materials, and expanding legal immigration to rebuild the skilled trades workforce that keeps the housing market moving.
It also means reforming zoning laws that allow a handful of activists to block entire neighborhoods and phasing out federal subsidies that inflate prices by distorting credit markets. Together, these reforms would tackle the real causes of high housing costs: scarcity, inefficiency and government overreach.
Do those things, and the market will do what it does best: deliver abundance, innovation and opportunity.
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The goal of homeownership is worth fighting for. It strengthens families, builds communities and creates generational wealth. But we can’t borrow our way to prosperity. The answer to high housing costs isn’t a longer mortgage; it’s a lighter burden.
President Trump’s instinct to put working families first is right on target. The best way to make housing affordable again is to unleash America’s builders, entrepreneurs and workers, not to create a new kind of debt. Let builders build. Let markets work. Let families keep more of what they earn. That’s how we restore the American Dream: build, baby, build.
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Patrick M. Brenner is the founder and president of the Southwest Public Policy Institute, a nonprofit research institute in the American Southwest dedicated to promoting better living through better policy.
