The New York Times
A proposal by the American Enterprise Institute for a low-cost, 15-year mortgage intended to help low- and middle-income borrowers build equity has attracted considerable attention over the last two months, including in this column. But the concept is getting some pushback from the Urban Institute.
A Nov. 13 blog post by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center argues that, contrary to what its proponents suggest, the so-called Wealth Building Home Loan is “not a silver bullet” for lower-income borrowers. “Some people have made it sound like a solution to everybody’s problems,” said Ellen Seidman, a senior fellow at the center and an author of the post. “There are a lot of good things about it, but the payments are higher than on the 30-year. And if you try to get the payments down to the same level, it requires a big interest rate subsidy.”
