When it comes to finding the right home, first‑time buyers need to not only find the right home, but it also needs to be at an affordable price. In today’s real estate market, that’s getting harder to do.
Fewer homes are affordable to first-time buyers — which is typically considered under $300,000 — and competition is fierce. And for most, $300,000 may be a stretch. The median sale price in Green Bay was around $270,000 in late 2025, says Jill Dickson-Kesler, a real estate broker with Coldwell Banker.
“That’s the price point in the market that we have the biggest demand for and the smallest amount of inventory for,” she says.
With multiple buyers competing over a limited number of homes, Kimberly Adams, a residential loan officer at Associated Bank, says prospective homebuyers need to come prepared to home showings with their prefinancing packages.
“Realtors want to see the preapprovals as part of the offers. They’re trying to protect their buyers, plus it makes a stronger overall offer for the prospective buyer,” she says.
50-year mortgages not money‑savers
Modern mortgages came about during the Great Depression with the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934. While 30-year fixed mortgages are the most popular option, there are 10-year, 15-year and 20-year options currently available. Each mortgage option serves a particular need, says Krystal Kubichka, AVP-retail banking in Bank First’s Sturgeon Bay office.
Shorter-term mortgages usually have higher payments with lower interest rates and are used when someone is looking to pay off a loan more quickly. Or someone with a 30‑year mortgage may refinance into a 15‑year product that has a lower interest rate in a bid to pay off their mortgage more quickly.
Last year, President Trump proposed the creation of a 50-year mortgage, which he said would make home ownership more affordable for more people. While Kubichka says it could allow more people to gain initial entry into home ownership, it wouldn’t save people money over the long term.
“It would come with a higher interest rate than a 30-year interest rate, so you would be paying more interest, and it would take a lot longer to build equity in the home,” she says.
For example, if someone took out a $250,000 mortgage for 30 years, after three years, they would have $7,000 equity in their home. With a 50-year mortgage, they would have just $1,800 in equity in their home after three years. The longer the loan term, the higher the interest rate, even if it’s just a quarter point, Kubichka says.
“If they’re not able to grow the equity fast enough in their homes, they could wind up underwater, where the amount they owe on their homes is more than what their home is worth,” she says. “If someone did have a 50‑year mortgage, I would have them look for ways to convert it to a 30-year mortgage as soon as they were able.”
The interest paid on the two mortgages in the scenario is even more stark: The interest paid on the 30-year mortgage is $290,000 while the interest paid on the 50-year mortgage is $539,000.
The monthly payment may not be too much of a difference between a 30-year and a 50-year mortgage. Adams says it would be less than $100, but for some people that could be a big deal.
“It definitely takes longer to build equity if you have a 50-year mortgage, but some people just want that pride of ownership,” she says.
Adams recalls a 40-year mortgage product offered in the early 2000s as buyers coped with rising home prices. “They had a higher interest rate than the 30-year products. Regulators tightened the lending standards, and they eventually went away after the 2008 market crash,” she says.
Rising home prices have changed some prospective buyers’ behaviors.
While it used to be common for buyers to save up to 20% of a home’s value to use as a down payment, most first-time homebuyers now put down just 3 to 5%, Kubichka says. By not reaching the 20% threshold, it means buyers need to purchase private mortgage insurance (PMI), which adds to their monthly mortgage payment and benefits the lender. (The national down payment average is 14%.)
“PMI doesn’t do anything for the buyer. It stays on the account until you have 20% equity in the home,” Kubichka says. “For some people, reaching that 20% down payment is just too much, so they go with the minimum amount of 3% on FHA loans.”
Kubichka says it is best if prospective homebuyers meet with lenders before they start looking at homes to find out how much they can afford.
“I always tell people I don’t want them to drain their entire savings account to make a down payment on a home, because you’re going to need money once you move in. You don’t want to resort to putting everything on credit cards with a 22% interest rate after you move in,” she says.
Adams says there’s a difference between what people can afford and what they should actually spend on a home. “Your income may qualify you for a really expensive home, which is why I ask people, ‘What do you want your monthly payment to be?’ It’s good to have that figured out before you go to look at homes.”
Not enough homes
Home prices have generally risen faster than wages over the past 10 to 15 years, especially since 2020. At the same time, the historically low mortgage rates of a decade ago have risen in recent years, pricing some out of the market, Dickson-Kesler says.
“Where a median buyer might be well within reach of a starter home a decade ago, today they often face a bigger share of income going toward housing costs. Inventory was extremely tight for much of that period, which helped push [home] prices upward,” she says.
Rising construction costs, which began going up during the pandemic, led to higher prices on new homes and fewer new homes being built. And with fewer homes on the market, prices on existing homes increased.
“Low inventory is one of the primary drivers of rising home prices. When there aren’t enough homes for sale relative to demand, buyers compete for a limited number of properties, and that pushes prices up,” says Dickson-Kesler, adding that’s been especially true since 2020.
Aging baby boomers could add more homes to the housing supply as they downsize and move out of their single-family homes. Dickson-Kesler says some of those homes may fall into the affordable housing market and increase inventory.
“But that’s happening very slowly, so we’re not really seeing or expecting a big influx on that to make a big change,” she says. “The homes coming on the market from boomers are often a bit dated, so buyers are going to have to manage expectations of a ‘move-in ready’ home for an affordable price and see it as an investment that they may need to slowly update to their taste.”
