With the unlikeliness of the mortgagee living in the same house that length of time, coupled with the interest-forward bias of payments, it is little different than renting the property

A lot of people don't understand that. It's all about the payment. When I worked at Radio Shack, we were told to not talk about the price, but only the payment, using RS' in house financing. If they didn't like the monthly payment, break it down to a weekly amount. If they still didn't like that, break it down to a daily amount. It was the same amount they would end up paying, but just keep breaking it down until you hit a level the customer saw as trivial. It's like some charity that insists the big pile of cash they are asking you for is "only thirty seven cents a day".

The news reported that financing for 50, instead of 30, would result in the mortagee paying about 86% more interest.

I bet it happens. And the 30 year mortgage will be as forgotten as 3 year car financing is now. Because the sellers can keep escalating prices, and profit margins, the way they have with cars, and the buyer doesn't notice, because he has been trained to look at the size of the payments, not the actual price, let alone how much he's paying in interest.

Steve...debt averse.