this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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Point taken, but where are you in the world with an 8.5% mortgage? Rates in the US for 30 year mortgages are around 6.5% right now (source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US)
the baseline is around 6.5% but I don't think most people get that, plus it was up around 7.5% six months ago
the numbers in the meme are definitely closer to what we've seen recently
When I bought my first house - doing so with decent income but pretty bad credit - I did so at 6.25%.
Everyone in the room recoiled at such an apparently high number.
Funnily it's better the higher it is.
Someone complained wildly when we bought an appartement at 3.5%, they were ha ha that's so easy I had to pay 12%!
But my price was much higher, as everyone now can borrow more, and it makes sense to take on a 20 year loan. With 12% you borrow less, and also it doesn't make sense to borrow for more than like 12 years, so prices adjust. On top of that, if ever you lose your house (or it's degraded) I personally prefer the base price being 150K instead of 450K...
So yeah it's not just lower is better in the housing market.
++rate is only better if you already have a lower rate because it generally means appreciation of the property asking price, and depreciation of your payment and the amount you still owe, all have accelerated.
This is because loan rates rise and fall with the prime rate, which is mostly tied to inflation rate, AKA the rate of currency depreciation.
What? You're confused. Lower is always better. I bought my house when interest was 2.5%, pretty much the bottom of the interest rates during the start of covid. My house loan was around 450K. By the time I've paid off my loan (if I were to make the normal monthly payment) I'll have given the bank over 750K dollars. Even at an amazing rate, some bank gets 2/3s the cost of my house in interest. At 12%, a 30 year, $450,000 loan would have you paying the bank 1.8M dollars, meaning some bank gets over 3x the cost of your house in interest. That's insane. I get that you're saying people will buy worse houses to not borrow as much money, but that's not really a win. A family of 5 can't fit in a one bedroom apartment.
Lower is definitely always better in this case, there is no upside to paying more interest since you can typically get around the same range (give or take) no matter the term length.
Nowhere but then the infographic would have been less shocking.
https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/mortgage-interest-rates
My math says that the monthly principal+interest on that house is more like $4,300 a month, assuming:
Not insignificant, but not wildly off like the infographic.
You gotta roll home owners insurance in there, and taxes.
That's realistic, but the infographic doesn't include tax and insurance. Working backwards, it has:
The monthly principal-and-interest payment is exactly as the post said, $2024 / month.
Has insurance gone up? Absolutely? Have property taxes generally rise? They have. But this is an honest like-for-like comparison.
Who has 120k lying around for a down payment?
That's "only" (checks average income in the U.S.) 2 years of average income in the U.S.
Oh, and that's $120K after tax
Someone selling a home they already own. I know thats not helpful to most, but thats the only realistic way to have 120k sitting around
$2024 > $4300 is more than double, while also assuming saving an extra $50,000 in downpayment while that cost increased.
Although the down payment has less impact. But nonetheless, that lower payment boosts the loan to about $4600.
Wages aren't doubling.
Oh, I agree with you, and concur with the spirit of the infographic. I just like accurate calculations!
We don't do 30 years here anymore. Its 25, and most people can't do the 20% down, its 5% for first time homebuyer
Fun fact: the increase in monthly payment going from a 30-year down to a 20-year mortgage is less than 20-year to 15-year.
This is also why the talk about longer mortgages should be a non-starter.