me_irl

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.