'Disaster': Trump's big affordability plan bashed by experts

Experts bashed President Donald Trump's proposed plan to make housing more affordable on Monday, calling it a "disaster" that would result in more families passing down debt instead of assets.

Last week, Trump proposed creating a 50-year mortgage in an effort to make housing more affordable. That's in contrast to the traditional 30-year mortgage, which most Americans use to buy homes.

Members of the Trump administration, like Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, have described the idea as a "game changer" for housing finance. However, other industry experts seem more skeptical.

“Rather than passing down wealth and assets, we’re going to be passing down debt,” Pete Carroll, Cotality’s head of public policy and industry relations, told the Wall Street Journal.

Other experts said the idea reminded them of some of the innovations that occurred in the mortgage market ahead of the 2009 financial crisis.

“A lot of so-called innovations occurred to make mortgages more affordable prior to the financial crisis,” Jim Millstein, co-chairman of Guggenheim Securities, who served as the Treasury Department’s chief restructuring officer from 2009 to 2011, told the Journal. “It proved to be a disaster.”

Some professionals also pointed out that extending the loan term for a mortgage would not have the effect that Trump intends.

“There is not currently a secondary market for such loans, nor would a robust secondary market be cultivated any time soon,” Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily, told CNBC. “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.”