Finance
Trump proposes 50-year mortgage, but homeowner savings could be minimal
In another attempt to make homebuying more affordable, President Donald Trump floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage in a social media post. In response, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, posted that they are “working on it,” and that it would be, “a complete game-changer.”
The purpose of a longer-term mortgage would be to lower the monthly payment for homeowners. The longer the term of the loan, the smaller the principal needed each month to pay it off in full. But such a plan has other trade-offs.
Using the latest median sale price of a home from September, $415,200, according to the National Association of Realtors, and the current interest rate of about 6.3%, according to Mortgage News Daily, on a 30-year fixed loan with a 20% down payment, the monthly payment of just principal and interest would be $2,056. If you raise the length to 50 years, at the same interest rate, that payment would be $1,823, a savings of $233 per month.
Homeowners, however, would not build equity as quickly because their principal payments would be smaller. The amount of interest paid to lenders would be 40% higher.
How it might work
The real question is can Fannie and Freddie do this. Analysts say it is possible, but a 50-year mortgage does not currently meet the definition of a qualified mortgage under the Dodd-Frank Act, which provides investors with a backup from Fannie and Freddie if a loan goes bad. But regulators were given the authority to change that in order to insure mortgage affordability. That, however, could take up to a year, given the need for congressional approval, according to Jaret Seiberg, a financial services and housing policy analyst at TD Cowen.
“Fannie and Freddie could establish a secondary market for 50-year mortgages in advance of policy changes. They even could buy mortgages for their retained portfolios. Yet this would not alter the legal liability for lenders. It is why we believe lenders will not originate 50-year mortgages absent QM [qualified mortgage] policy changes,” wrote Seiberg in a note to clients.
How it would impact rates
Then there is the question of the mortgage rate. The average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage is currently 66 basis points lower than the rate on the 30-year fixed, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. This would imply that the rate on the 50-year fixed would be higher. It all depends on investor demand for the product.
“There is not currently a secondary market for such loans, nor would a robust secondary market be cultivated any time soon,” said Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. “That means that, in addition to the extremely low amount of principal paid down in earlier years of the loan, the interest rates would also be quite a bit higher than 30-year loans — a double whammy for those with any hope of building equity.”
Graham said that for all practical purposes, the loan would be more akin to an interest-only loan, because very few people would keep a home for 50 years. Homeowners could still gain equity through home price appreciation, but prices have been softening swiftly across the nation this year, with nowhere near the appreciation seen in the years previous.
How it impacts affordability
Even realtors agree that the savings to homeowners would be minimal.
“This is not the best way to solve housing affordability. The administration would do better to reverse tariff-induced inflation, which is keeping the rates on existing mortgages high,” wrote Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com in a release.
Others note that this new mortgage product would likely depend on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remaining under government conservatorship. The Trump administration has said that the two will be taken private and then have an initial public offering sometime in the near future.
“Adoption of a 50-year mortgage product might complicate the path to privatization for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” analysts at Evercore ISI wrote in a note to clients. “That said, we understand that the Administration is expecting the GSEs to remain under conservatorship after it sells roughly a 5% stake to the public. This would allow the Administration to maintain control of the GSEs for the foreseeable future.”
Home affordability has been a major pressure point for the Trump administration. Historically low interest rates resulting from pandemic-driven economic policy caused an historic run on housing that catapulted home prices more than 50% higher in just five years. As a result, home sales have weakened dramatically, as has mortgage demand.
The average age of a typical first-time buyer in 1991 was 28. By 2024, it had reached 38, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors, whose deputy chief economist called the number, “shocking.”
The Trump administration has been pressuring builders to put up more homes in order to ease prices, claiming they are sitting on an oversupply of empty lots. Builders contest that claim and continue to cite high costs for land, labor and materials.
On the company’s latest earnings call, PulteGroup CEO Ryan Marshall said he agreed with the president’s perspectives as it pertains to an undersupply of roughly 4 million homes for sale, but added, “While this supply deficit certainly has an impact on affordability generally, the complexities of the new home construction industry dictate that tackling a problem of this scale requires a coordinated and comprehensive approach that brings together federal, state, and local leaders working in partnership with the new home construction industry.”
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For the generation that should be in its “peak savings years,” the prospect of retiring on time has shifted from a plan to a prayer.
A newly released Employee Financial Wellness Survey by PwC found that nearly 50% of Gen X employees are pushing back their retirement dates, citing stagnant wages, rising everyday costs, and a lack of liquid savings.
Additionally, only 38% of Gen Xers believe they can retire when they originally planned, and more than half of this demographic expect to withdraw funds from their retirement accounts early to cover short-term costs.
“For employers, this isn’t a future problem. Financial anxiety during peak career years can affect focus and engagement,” PwC researchers write. “If the risks are clear, the question is why more employees aren’t taking action. It’s not a lack of desire. Most employees want stability, confidence and to feel in control. But many don’t feel equipped to get there.”
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The primary driver of this retirement delay is the inability to save as inflation eats away at monthly expenses, the report notes. Twenty-five percent of the total workforce is living without a buffer, and nearly half cannot meet basic household expenses.
Nearly half of Gen X workers are delaying retirement, PwC reports. (Getty Images)
“[Forty-nine percent] say their compensation isn’t keeping up with costs. As expenses rise faster than income, day-to-day trade-offs are becoming routine. Employees aren’t just feeling squeezed. They’re making difficult financial decisions to stay afloat,” the PwC report continues..
As a result, when Gen Xers cannot afford to leave their current jobs, the entire corporate ladder stalls, creating business risks, with companies facing higher costs as older talent remains on payroll longer than expected.
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“When employees dip into retirement funds early or delay retirement altogether, it affects more than personal finances and retirement plan leakage,” the report says. “It may also influence workforce planning, healthcare costs, succession timing and overall organizational stability.”
The findings also show that a significant portion – 41% – of the workforce feel they were never given the tools to manage a crisis of this magnitude, leading to a sense of being “overwhelmed” by financial choices.
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PwC provided a call to action for employees and their employers, encouraging them to reduce the stigma around financial education, foster trust through human coaches, emphasize skill building and focus on day-to-day finances before long-term goals.
“Employees define financial wellness simply: less stress, fewer surprises and the freedom to make financial choices with confidence. For employers, that’s the opportunity.”
Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
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