What would be wrong with a 60 year mortgage?

I mean the mortgage company would get the money even if the person did not live for 60 years. They could resale at the market price and continue drawing interest. It seems like a more stable way to allow people to keep their homes.

As a buyer, you never really build up any equity in the home unless property values go WAY up. Your extended repayment time means you pay a lot more in interest and, like conventional mortgages, you are paying mostly interest for the first 30% or 40% of the repayment period. So in your scenario, it would be around 20 or 30 years before you even start to repay any principle at all and even then, it's just a fraction of your payment going to principle; it's still going mostly to interest. Your monthly payments are lower, sure, but they're not THAT much lower, and since you have no equity in the home, the $200 a month or whatever you are saving isn't really worth it.

In other words... you pay and pay and pay on the home but when it comes time to sell it, you still owe the bank more than it is worth, even if you've been paying on it for 10 or 15 years.
You might as well rent! You can't borrow against the equity and you never really own any part of the home.

Generally, people do not work for 60 years. Their careers last 30-40 years and then they retire. The idea with a 30 year mortgage is that you can actually have that paid off when you retire. It would be much more difficult to save for retirement if you had to include a house payment as well as you other expenses.

Some of us actually buy our homes and pay for them.

An interest only loan (which is what a 60-year mortgage would be) is the equivalent of renting the property with a lease that you couldn't break.

The idea is to pay on a house while you're working and earning enough money to pay for it. After retirement- you wouldn't (generally) be able to afford the mortgage anymore, thus making you default on your 60 year loan- it would also great a lot of hassle for the mortgage companies because of the issues with death, resale, etc.

Here in Canada with the housing prices skyrocketing in the west the bank now offers 40 year mortgages so that people can afford to buy a home.. Thats how it is done in the Asian countries.. sometimes with 100 year mortgages and then the homes are passed down the generations for the family. Only drawback is houses aren't built to last 100 years anymore..

There are no 60 year mortgages. The period is just way too long, and we're way too far in debt as it is now.