7 Mortgage Interest Deduction Myths

By: Dona DeZube

Published: February 16, 2011


Only 9% earn more than $200,000 per year.
This myth may have arisen because of a related fact: If you buy a house, you’re much more likely to accumulate wealth by the end of your life. Home owners have an average net worth of $200,000, while the average renter’s net worth is $5,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.

Myth #2: I’m not affected by the mortgage deduction because I don’t own a home.

If the mortgage interest deduction goes away, home values would fall by 15%, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® estimates. When home values fall, tax revenues follow suit, giving your local government two choices:

Raise property taxes. Not only will home owners pay more in taxes, renters won’t escape unscathed either as landlords raise rents to cover their costs.
Cut services that everyone—renters and owners—enjoys.
Myth #3: Switching to a 12% mortgage interest credit would be a wash for most.

One proposal floating around Congress is to replace the mortgage interest deduction with a 12% nonrefundable mortgage interest tax credit. (Deductions reduce your taxable income; credits reduce your tax liability.) This plan would increase taxes for many home owners.

Example: If you paid $10,000 in mortgage interest, and you’re in the 25% bracket, you’d pay $1,300 in extra taxes.

The $10,000 deduction you have now saves you $2,500 on your taxes (25% x 10,000).
The 12% credit would save you only $1,200 (12% x 10,000) on your taxes.
In this scenario, if the mortgage interest deduction is changed to a 12% credit, you’d lose $1,300 (the current $2,500 savings minus the $1,200 you’ll save under the 12% plan).
Myth #4: Not that many people take the mortgage interest deduction.

There are 75 million American home owners, and 38.5 million of them take the mortgage interest deduction. The average mortgage interest tax deduction is $12,200, and a typical benefit for home owners is $3,050 a year.

The mortgage deduction is a key benefit to first-time home owners and trade-up buyers because you pay the most mortgage interest when you first take out a mortgage. (You won’t pay equal amounts of principal and interest until year 13 or later, depending on your interest rate.)

People with large families also get a lot of bang from mortgage interest deductibility—they buy relatively big houses for their big families.

Myth #5: Getting rid of the deduction won’t affect me or my housing market.

It will mean lower property values for all American home owners, including the one-third who own their homes outright and the 12 million who take the standard deduction.

Even if you don’t have a mortgage, getting rid of the MID will affect how much home you can afford to buy—and how much a buyer will pay for your home.

Myth #6: People will still buy my house without the mortgage interest deduction.

Yes, people will still value home ownership, but it will be harder for them to buy your house. The mortgage interest deduction makes it cheaper to buy a home because it saves real money at tax time.

If you bought a home last year with a $200,000, 30-year, 5% fixed-rate mortgage and you’re in a 25% tax bracket, you’d save about $2,500 from the mortgage interest deduction alone in the first year you own your home. That’s money you can use to pay down other debts, save for your children’s college education, or put away to buy a move-up house.

Myth #7: Solving the U.S. budget problems requires everyone to sacrifice.

Home owners already pay 80% to 90% of the federal income tax collected. If mortgage interest deductibility disappears, you and your fellow home owners could foot 95% of federal income tax.

If you’re at the beginning of your mortgage, losing the mortgage deduction will cost you a bundle:

$26,685—a 15% drop in value for the median home valued at $177,900.
A proportionally smaller gain in overall home equity over your lifetime, because your home now starts from a lower value.
Dona DeZube has been writing about real estate for more than two decades. She lives a suburban Baltimore 1970s rancher on a 3-acre lot shared with possums, raccoons, foxes, a herd of deer, and her blue-tick hound.

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