Why you SHOULDN'T get a 15-year Mortgage

First of all, there’s NOTHING stopping you from paying down a 30-year mortgage early if you want to. If you get a 30 year loan, you can pay it off whenever you want. If you decide you want to pay it off in 15 years, just increase your monthly payment and pay it off sooner.

What a 30 year loan gives you that a 15-year loan doesn’t is FLEXIBILITY. It gives you the ability, if you want to, to pay it off over 30 years and invest elsewhere…or you can pay it off in 5 years, it doesn’t matter. The advantage to doing this is that it gives you more safety and leeway with your payments.

Also, home equity isn’t really going to be making you money…as unpopular as that is to say, when you have your money tied up in a property, it’s not money that’s easily accessible to invest elsewhere at a higher return. In order to get that money, you either need to sell the property - or do a cash-out refinance, pulling out your money, but then taking out a brand new loan and starting all of this again.

With a 30 year loan, you’ll have access to your money as you need it because you’re paying LESS money into an illiquid investment like real estate, and like my last example, you’ll have more free cashflow available to you at the end of the month.

And arguably, the difference in loan amounts between 15 years and 30 years is really such a small number after you account for write offs and inflation…that you may as well just take the 30 year for additional flexibility, allowing you to re-invest the money at a higher return.

And let me just say this for all the Dave Ramsey followers who live by his advice of the 15 year mortgage:
The IDEAL scenario here is that if you’re getting a home for yourself to live in, buy something where you could afford the 15-year mortgage, but take a 30 year for additional flexibility. If you’re getting a house where you can ONLY afford a 30 year house payment, I’d argue that you should lower your price range.

For an investment property, always take the 30 year…cash flow is king, not equity, so you could always go with the option that gives you the greatest amount of write offs…which is the 30 year…and the most cash flow…which is also the 30 year.