Does anyone remember when mortgage rates were almost 17%!

mokryna we change to different rates in the UK as well. If automatic it called the 'variable rate' but now adays, many people prefer to negotiate an even better deal with a different lender.

In our city of York, house prices actually doubled the following year (1988), such that the wonderful family who moved next but one to us paid more for their mid terrace two bed than we did for much larger three bed. However they were leaving a one bed London mousehole, so were still thrilled to get garden etc. Just not fair, who gets what for how much.

Yes I’m 1975 we bought our first house It was my money but my name never went on the mortgage account Lived on egg curry Had£6 a week to live on Was expected to give up work once had a child no way did nights Mu in-laws no help man attitude

^ It is fine if you have a fixed rate for the full term of the mortgage when rates are low, but imagine you had signed up for a mortgage when rates were over 10% and they drop, as they have done, to only 2 or 3% when you are stuck with paying 10%.^
Too true in the UK but in France you can change to a lower fixed rate.

mortgages are now treated like utility bills. You regularly shop round to see of you can do better with another lender.

It is fine if you have a fixed rate for the full term of the mortgage when rates are low, but imagine you had signed up for a mortgage when rates were over 10% and they drop, as they have done, to only 2 or 3% when you are stuck with paying 10%.

You can port mortgages from one house to another in the UK, but it is not common.

I think every system in the UK and elsewhere have pros and cons and we are most comfortable with the system we are most familiar with.

I can recall mortgage rates being that high, and also one terrible week when inflation and mortgage rates, already high, were hit by a financial crisis that saw interest rates rise yet again and to a frightening figure. My work colleague had just bought a house that he could barely afford, and on the day when the news was released he felt so ill and stressed that he went home. My OH worked in finance in the City and tried to reassure him that it wouldn't sustain - the Government would recover the crisis and the rates would return to what they were - and they did, quite quickly - but what a frightening time that was. I was uncomfortably aware that we too were stretched to the limit and both working full time - there was no more 'give' in our economy!

If you move and same mortgage can be transferred to the new home

But MOnica, these mortgages are fixed at the very low rates and can be spread over as many years as you wish, 25 years + if you wish. At the time of signing you are given a spreadsheet of all the payments due over the years. There is no shortfall because the rate was so low at the beginning.

Nowadays, in the UK as well, people take out fixed rate mortgages, however they will rarely be for more than 10 years at an absolute max and are usually 3 - 5 years long.

We have just taken out a Retirement Interest Only mortgage to pay for an extension. The rate is fixed for the first 5 years

We bought our first house in 1969 and bought our second in 1973 but hadn’t sold the first as sale fell through at the last moment. Two mortgages. We were young…..

However living in France, let me tell you if you take a mortgage out with a French bank, the rate you sign for is that you pay for the rest of the repayment, even if the rate shoots up.. Moreover, if the rate goes down you can speak to the bank, or play one bank against the other and get a lower rate.

When I think of the misery I and all the others suffered and will suffer in the UK, I really don’t understand why it can’t be done the French way.

Bought our first house in December 1981,
Rate at 15.5%
We both had to teach as we could not even pay the mortgage alone on one salary.
We had an endowment mortgage so if we lost our jobs the interest would still be paid ( we were young and believed anything anyone told us !)
We rushed down to Cornwall after getting married and applying ALL OVER the country for teaching jobs and lived in a winterlet flat for 3 months and then lived in a council house for 3 years in order to save up for a deposit.

I remember it all too well. We bought our first house in 1985 just before our 1st child was born deposit paid by developers, much cheaper than renting. Upgraded to slightly larger house in 1989 just before 3rd child was born. Then interest rates started rising, it felt like daily! Husband lost his job.
Luckily we were able to sell, made no money but at least we didn’t end up with negative equity. Nightmare! Without family lending us money for a rental deposit & husband finding another job we would have been homeless.

Bought our first house in Hertfordshire in 1991 and the increase in interest rate was awful. Spent a whole winter boiling kettles and showering with a, watering can as the boiler was broken and we couldn't afford a new one! To add further stress my late husband had to work for a year with no pay as he worked for his pa and the practice was in dire straits. We sold up after a, couple of years and lost money but moved to Scotland and bought a much nicer house for less money. I can remember going to visit a pawnshop one day as we were so short of cash! I think my sons think I am exaggerating when I talk about how tough it was. They are both in their early twenties and have their own homes and no mortgages to worry about.

Ah yes remember it well !" In order to buy our first house we had to move from Essex to March in Cambridgeshire, get up at 5.00am and commute to London ....the building society only loaned 1.5times salary in those days (1972) and hardly considered the wife's income .....what they never took into account was even in those days our season tickets from there to London cost well over £750 each a year....which would have meant we could have bought nearer to London if this had been taken into account ! Mind you, the bungalow brand new cost £6,100 for three beds, garage and a big garden ....not that we saw much of it, getting home around 8.00pm made really long days ....and little money left over after petrol costs and running the car to get to the station 20 miles away at Peterborough to get the early fast train into London ....and the mortgage interest rate was insane ! Never had a lot to eat, or spend ....LV's every day working in London had to pay for a good lunch which they did back then !

Negative equity was also a terrible thing for people to deal with.

Gabriell56 - True
Kasimo - Really Really!!
None of the politicians leaders helped.
Those in the South had an easier time, (although still bad) than those in the North. It was true desperation.

Sorry, that should have said
'renting out a room'
I really must get into the habit of pressing the Preview button before Post button!

Yes I do!! I live in dread that the interest rates will go up and my daughter and her husband would have to go through what we did. It was horrible, we had just moved house and had a high mortgage and were hoping to ride it out even before the rates went up. We had two young children, I had a Saturday job in M&S but we then had to all sleep in one room so that we could rent the other two rooms out to lodgers. Do people still do that? I suppose they do but call it renting put a room and the people renting do their own cooking etc. I bet they wouldn't want to share a bathroom these days either!

My husband worked continental shifts, so it was impossible for me to go out to work. We had bought our house for £2,565 in 1967, and our mortgage started out at £17. 6. 3d a month, which we could just about afford. Rates and water rates were paid together at £52 per annum. I nearly had a heart attack when we got a rates demand, just after we moved in, for £35. Luckily they let us pay in instalments.
When the mortgage rates rocketed we were really struggling. I became a childminder, which didn't pay well in those days, but it helped a little. I remember receiving the yearly letter which showed that all our mortgage payments had gone to pay the interest, and our balance had gone down by a mere £3. I cried!
Somehow we struggled through, with DH working all the overtime he could get, almost killing himself from the strain. The children didn't go hungry, but I had to be very creative with my cooking. A bag of free scraps ' for the cat' from the market fish seller made tasty fishcakes. We couldn't afford a cat, or he might have ended up as catcakes! ?y
What doesn't kill you makes you strong! The only money I have ever owed was the mortgage. Cash only for everything else, and my children have learned from my experience, and are all good managers, with their own homes. Even on my basic pension I feel rich, compared with those times.

I so remember it. We moved from Scotland to North Wales with work in 1988 after 2 years there, sold for what we paid for a flat there, and our money then sat in the bank while house prices spiralled up, something to do with a change in the MIRAS regulations so both of a couple could claim relief I seem to remember, but don’t recall details. Houses were coming on to the market and being sold within hours, they didn’t get on the estate agents lists until their pet clients had had first pick, and people were having offers accepted and being gazumped by somebody offering more. I remember being in a bidding war while trying to do my job one day, being scared stiff because DH was out on site and not contactable (before mobiles) and being egged on by the estate agent to up my bid, way over what we had agreed we could afford, or we would lose the house, which we did.
When we did buy, in 1989, it was way more than we could truly afford, more than my salary was going on the mortgage, and DH often didn’t get paid till the end of the month (or the next month after threatening further action) by his clients. Then the mortgage rates started climbing. I remember 15%, may well have been higher but I was too frightened to look. We were living hand to mouth, and came very close to selling up. We have a garage with 2 rooms over it. DH, who is quite handy, put up a partition and converted one half into a little shower room and the other into a kitchenette and we let them out, which saved us.
30 years on, the rooms are DH workshop, but us letting them out in desperation has come back to haunt us. Because they were let out 30 years ago the council are classing them as a second home and charging us 200% Council Tax on the building. The Council Tax on that is almost as high as the main house. We have paid off our mortgage but are now helping DD with hers. We are now on a fixed income and can’t really afford the high tax, so are faced again with possibly having to sell up, causing us a lot of worry, and we really don’t want to let out again, the people were perfectly nice, but noise from the garage was a problem, we couldn’t park our car in our drive or get it out of the garage if they had visitors, and our house and garden were never our own. Appeals have got us nowhere.

Quite often sorting out the unholy mess left by Labour!

JIC anyone wondering? Conservative govs resided over all the worst deprivations of the 70/80/90s !!! Nothing changes does it?

I find myself really envious (sorry) of those who worked in Banks/Building Societies and got staff mortgages etc. Married in 1966, I was immediately classed as temporary staff, removed from the pension scheme and denied annual bonuses, interest on my current account and access to staff mortgages. There was no maternity pay in those days, so I worked until 21 days before my DD was born. With a child we were then entitled to a Council flat (hell on earth). It took us 3 years, with DH working 2 jobs and me part-time to save enough for a deposit on a semi-derelict cottage (which had a huge garden so we lived on mainly home grown fruit & veg) and another 3 of DIY to make it a comfortable home for our, by then 2 DDs.

Oh yes I remember it well. We had just moved house and were stretched financially anyway, and this rise knocked us sideways. But, like we did in those days, we just got on with things. Took on more work, cut back all treats in life and we survived. Every generation goes through some sort of hardship .

Ps our flat bought in 1976!