Does anyone remember when mortgage rates were almost 17%!

In the words from a Maurice Chevalier song, 'O yes I remember it well' .

Yes, I was newly divorced and had bought his share of the house off him, it wasn't easy. I took in 'paying guests' - lodgers - to help make ends meet. Still friends with two of them.

I certainly do. Our rate changed once a year to reflect the increases and it shot up by over £150-a lot in those days. I had to return to work sooner than planned. It was very much a hand to mouth existence

Yes we had just bought our first house using all our savings. We had been in a furnished flat before so only had a bed an old Formica kitchen table with 4 kitchen chairs and two old wooden armed fireside chairs both lots given by my grandparents. We had planned to buy furniture second hand as we could afford it. Then just after we moved the rates shot up. The house had no wardrobes, no fitted kitchen just a larder and luckily we bought the old cooker off the previous owners. We lived out of bin bags for over a year til we could afford second hand wardrobes then a chest of drawers. I made floor cushions out of scraps of material stuffed with a cut up old bed quilt so we or our guests could sit down as the wooden kitchen chairs were not comfortable. We rented a tv and had a radio as couldn’t afford to go out. That was life, a lot of people were the same.

Remember it all too well, having to sell as we could not pay the mortgage in the end. Invested the money in shares through the bank until we could buy again 5 years later as they were doing so well, then came black Monday and one more fall. We lost a 3rd of everything and had to start from scratch. Gosh is was a hard time to survive with young children and both working full time, no reliable childcare and what there was was dreadfully expensive we thought. You can't even compare it all with now though.

Yes. We had to give our house back to building society as it was impossible to sell back then. So many were doing this as they could no longer pay the mortgage...

We bought our first house in 1976 and had a 15% mortgage. My husband was self employed and he didn’t have enough years earnings to get a mortgage. My husbands accountant arranged for them to include my earnings - civil service - and we managed to get a £4,000 mortgage. This was a mid-terrace property, badly in need of renovation, and we had to complete the renovation before they would give the mortgage. Fortunately, we were buying off a good friends parents and they agreed this situation. We took around 10 months to do it up ourselves, with some paid work to plumbers etc. Terrifying, as if it didn’t go to plan, we would have lost everything. What I find difficult to understand with the younger element is why they can afford to buy coffee every day for work, buy sandwiches etc, get their nails done and then complain that they have no money, where are their priorities? We were brought up on the maxim - if you can’t afford, don’t buy it. Served me well, over the years.

Oh yes I remember only too well as it nearly bankrupted us. Our outgoings were more than our incomings and we were by no means frivolous with our money but having 3 young children to feed, clothe and keep a roof over their heads was extremely tough. The credit cards kept us afloat but took years to pay off. I’d recoil in horror at the amount of interest accumulated each month.

We bought our council house in 1988 on a repayment/ endowment mortgage with the co-op . We seemed to get a letter giving us a increase in interest every single month . I’m not sure how the interest rates increased for but we managed the payments ok . What I do remember is that there was then a big fuss over the fact that endowment policies weren’t going to make enough money to cover the house cost during the fifteen years we had taken it over . We then changed the mortgage to a normal one and cashed in the policy when it matured after the fifteen years. Turns out it would have more than covered the initial mortgage but instead we were able to use the money for home improvements . Win win .

We bought our house in the early 70s and our term went up to infinity! Yes, £5 a week house -keeping. Faggots were frequent fare. Also wage freezes didn't help, but eventually things eased and we were able to pay off the mortgage early

Yes I remember mortgage rates being that high. I was working in the estate agents business at the time and unfortunately we regularly had properties to sell on behalf of the banks and lenders that had been repossessed because people just couldn’t afford to keep up the payments ?

It was terrifying. I don't know how we got through that phase in our lives, I must have blocked it out, but we did survive it. I would never want my children or grandchildren to know that level of worry in their lives.

It was worldwide as well.
Because of such a high interest rate , it meant that my ex husband couldn't afford to pay me for either my share of the house or pay maintenance for my son.
I'm still waiting !

I remember making so much soup from scraps of veg. I’d stretch out food and of course nothing was wasted. All clothes and furniture were second hand. No holidays all this just to survive as the house prices fell.
It was a sad time and we survived - not unscathed tho’
We bought a house in an area we thought we could afford. Not where we wanted but where we could afford.
And yet youngsters just now feel aggrieved. It’s different times.

remember it well two young children and only husband in work it was hard and some days we had hardly enough money to feed ourselves but the children never went hungry

Yes! Sold our first house in 1988 to buy a bigger one as I was pregnant. Had that happened only a year before prices were much lower, which I know is relative if buying & selling but it was a struggle, knowing I would soon be on maternity leave. I worked at a Merchant Bank in London and in those 'unenlightened' days I was informed that I either went back to work full time afterwards, or left! No part time hours. So I became a stay at home mum for a few years as, had I returned to work, my salary would have gone on childcare/train fares.

I do! We had just separated and I had a 7 year old plus returned to work full time! I had bought out my ex and budgeted on this! Then the increase occurred so I took the decision to rent out a room and that was a life saver! Their rent paid the mortgage allowing us to get on our feet !
My daughter was well looked after and I had second hand clothes for a long time but we have happy memories plus one lodger remains a friend 30 years later !!

Somewhere in my archives I have an annual statement from our building society, which shows mortgage repayments for the year, think it was 1979, totally well over £2800.00 but our actual mortgage that year was only reduced by just over £380 because of 18% interest rate, insurance and charges! The “ good old days”!
!!

I do, we bought our 1st home, a flat in 1988, I remember the interest rates going up what seemed like every month. We used to dread the postman delivering Mail in case it was a letter from the mortgage company saying the rate was going up. The winter of 1991 we have in. We were freezing, as only a gas fire in the living room, both working and a toddler. We had to pay childminder fees as well. My parents only lived half hour away, they rang and suggested we sell up & move in with them. We sold very quickly and moved in with my parents for 3 years, it was such a relief.

We bought our second house in 1988. I was pregnant with my second baby.
We ate jacket potatoes, baked beans on toast or fish in a bag. On a weekend we'd eat some chicken for a treat.
Those were the days...

When loans came almost entirely from Buiding Societies, the extent of their loans depended on how much they received in deposits, so at times there was very little money to lend. but they would never admit this.

They got around this by making mortgage offers borrowers couldn't afford. We put an offer of £5,000 on an end of terrace with a garage and large side garden. An inner terrace had sold for the same price. The surveyor valued the house at £4,000 and said £500 would be withheld until we had done a whole host of jobs, if necessary, including replastering the garage(!!!!). We came to the conclusion that the Building Society surveyor had never even gone into the house because he could have checked for himself whether or not all these jobs were necessary.

Obviously as first time buyers we simply couldn't afford the house, we hadn't got the money. In the end what and where we bought was dictated by finding a new estate where the devloper had done a deal with a building society so money was available, but we had to take out an endowmwnt policy.

I worked three jobs to pay the mortgage. I’d serve breakfasts in a hotel, travel into my day job as a social worker, go home and spend an hour and a half with the children then go out again to serve tables as a banqueting waitress. Sometimes my husband (who was a student at the time) would do the breakfast and dinner shifts so I could spent more time with the children. We often both worked shifts at weekends too. There was never any money to spare.

Then I got a promotion to set up a new unit and it meant a much longer travel time. My husband (still a student) encouraged me take the job even though it meant he then did all the housework, childcare, shopping etc. - and his studies. I worked until I was seven months pregnant, then went on maternity leave just as my husband needed to focus on his finals (he got a 1st!)

We were inventive cooks and made huge pans of food that lasted several meals and our children did without ‘extras’ a lot of the time. We never had a holiday except for visiting my husband’s parents in Devon, we drove a couple of ancient cars (to this day the most we’ve ever paid for a car is £3,800) and almost all of our furniture and clothing was second hand.

I planned my 2nd pregnancy in 1988, (wonderful timing - not); the mortgage rate just kept climbing throughout. And stress isn't good for pregnant women!

We bought a wreck in London in 1979 for £21,000. Mortgages were rationed and we were offered a mortgage of £13000 or £15000 if we waited 6 months!
Fortunately we’d made money on selling our first house in Birmingham, so could go ahead with a £13000 mortgage. But it took four years of doing the house up, no floors, ceilings and plumbing. All done DIY.

Katie59

In those days you had to be brave, whatever you bought it cost more the next week because inflation was 25%, those of us that “bit the bullet” never regretted it. Housing cost both rented and owned was much more affordable then, mortgages seems very achievable if both were working.

I remember mortgages being very difficult to get. You couldn't go to a bank because they didn't do mortgages. Building societies did mortgages so you had to save with one and jump through hoops to get your mortgage.

We were both working and living in a two bed town house. We were both on good money so decided to move to a 3 bed detached on a large plot of land before we started our family.
The building society refused to lend because our next move should be to a 3 bed semi even if we could afford something bigger.

We did get the home we wanted but had to get it through an insurance company and pay a higher rate.