Let me break this down... 50 year mortgages are horrible for the consumer.

If you finance $100,000 at 6.5% for 30 years, your payment is $632.07 and you will repay a total of $227,545.20 over the life of the loan.

If you finance $100,000 at 6.5% for 50 years, your payment is $563.72 and you will repay a total of $338,232.00 over the life of the loan.

As you can see the extra 20 years only saves you $68.35 per month on your payment - and costs you $110,686.80 MORE over the life of the loan.  That assumes that you can get the same interest rate on a 50 year mortgage as a 30 year mortgage and we all know that the longer you finance it the higher the interest rate.  Thus it is probably even worse than this would indicate.

Of course, nobody looks at the big picture - they only see the payment.  The problem is that if more people utilize the 50 year mortgage they will not build equity nearly as fast (same is true with the interest only options), thus they will not be able to refinance as often.  So, I don't think they are good for the abstractors in the long run either.

Just my opinion,
Robert A. Franco
SOURCE OF TITLE