The problem with the American 30-year mortgage

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

Business, News

4.6 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is as American as apple pie. But it wasn’t always this way, and it’s putting the housing market in a tough spot lately. A substantial amount of homeowners with low-rate mortgages are choosing to stay put in their homes rather than selling and buying a new one at higher rates. It’s created what’s known as a lock-in effect. On the show today, Andra Ghent, professor of finance at the University of Utah, explains how a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage became the norm in the United States, why it’s now putting the housing market in a bind, and how our mortgage system perpetuates inequality. Plus, could the Danish mortgage model work here?

Then, we’ll get into why the Federal Trade Commission is eyeing pharmacy benefit managers, the third-party companies that negotiate drug prices between health insurance providers and drugmakers. And, an editor at The Points Guy shares the story of a travel lesson learned.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

“Why do we have a 30-year mortgage, anyway?” from Marketplace
“A Huge Number of Homeowners Have Mortgage Rates Too Good to Give Up” from The New York Times
“A 30-Year Trap: The Problem With America’s Weird Mortgages” from The New York Times
“Denmark’s genius housing fix” from Business Insider
“Homeowners Don’t Want to Sell, So the Market for Brand-New Homes Is Booming” from The Wall Street Journal
“FTC Releases Interim Staff Report on Prescription Drug Middlemen” from the Federal Trade Commision
“F.T.C. Slams Middlemen for High Drug Prices, Reversing Hands-Off Approach” from The New York Times
“State Pharmacy Benefit Manager Legislation” from the National Academy for State Health Policy
“Prescription Drugs: Selected States’ Regulation of Pharmacy Benefit Managers” from the U.S. Government Accountability Office
“Fed Chair Powell talks up progress on inflation but says rate cuts not imminent yet” from CNN Business
“Software and social media to grab Congress’ attention” from Marketplace

We love to hear from you. Send your questions and comments to makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody it's Kai listen is it time to upgrade your car given new life by donating it to marketplace
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0:12.2	Let us turn your old car into a donation to power the journalism you rely on.
0:16.0	Go to Marketplace.org
0:18.0	slash vehicle to donate your car today. day. Adams, welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.
0:34.7	And I'm Amy Scott in for Ky Risdahl.
0:37.2	It's Tuesday, July 9th, and it's time for our deep dive episode. Today we are digging into the origins of the 30 year
0:45.6	fixed-rate mortgage which has been the norm in the United States for a long time but
0:50.0	it's actually pretty unusual compared to other countries and it's kind of gotten us into a mess in the housing market recently.
0:57.0	Right, it's creating what's known as a lock-in effect in the housing market.
1:02.0	Where homeowners with low rates are distanced lock-in effect in the housing market.
1:02.8	Where homeowners with low rates are disincentivized to sell and buy a new home at a higher rate.
1:09.2	And we're wondering if there's a better way to do housing.
1:13.0	So here to make a smart about this
1:15.0	is Andrew Ghent, professor of finance
1:17.1	at the University of Utah.
1:18.8	Welcome to the show.
1:20.7	Thanks so much for having me. Where did the 30-year mortgage come from?
1:26.0	It has origins back to at least the Great Depression, if not you could argue earlier.
1:32.0	Our residential mortgage system kind of... Great Depression, if not you could argue earlier,
1:33.4	our residential mortgage system kind of started
1:35.4	with these building and loans.
	...

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