50 year home loans

There is a problem with the declining level of home ownership in NZ, but 50-year mortgages are not the solution to it.

A 50 year term as compared to a 30 year term only sees the weekly mortgage reduced by say $50 a week, but it adds on hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra interest payments. In the first ten years of a 50 year mortgage, you would only pay off around 5% of your principal.