The Netherlands had for a while a very popular mortgage where you only pay interest. So in effect an infinite mortgage. (It now less popular for tax reasons). T

The Netherlands had for a while a very popular mortgage where you only pay interest. So in effect an infinite mortgage. (It now less popular for tax reasons). The reasons that works is that in a 30 year period (in The Netherlands), prices of houses are likely to have gone up enough that the mortgage is only a small fraction of the value of the house. At the same time, due to inflation, the actual value of the mortgage in future currency units is also very low. So if you can expect a reasonable pension, there is no reason to worry about taking a very long time to repay a house. Obviously, the assumption is that houses will go up in value. If on average houses go down in value then this doesn't work at all.