Old papers just discovered.

I have a file from when I worked at a Bank and applied for a mortgage on our first house. This was in 1979. It was a 2 bed semi for £11,500. I was only granted the mortgage if it was in my husbands name 🙄.
I can’t remember the interest rate but it was at staff rates….4% sounds correct.

In 1998 I think mortgage interest rates reached 15% or there abouts . Am I correct ?

Sorry I should have said 1988

We bought our first house in 1976, for £13000. I’m almost sure the interest rate was 13%

We bought our first flat in 1975. The bank wouldn’t take my wages into consideration towards the mortgage as I was “only”a woman. We could borrow 3.5 times my husband’s salary (which wasn’t much!)

I remember at some point the interest rates reached 17% once I was a SAHM

We bought in 1968. Paid £5950 with a mortgage of £5,600. The inteerst rate went over 7.0% before we completed and never got that low again until the late 1990s. It fell to 4% a year or so before our last of several mortgages was paid off in 2003

We got a mortgage of 3.5 DH;s income and half mine. I think that was because I was a graduate.

When we got married in 1964, we applied to Bldg Societies for a mortgage. I earned more than my fiance, and they would not accept any part of my earnings as I 'would be giving up work to have babies, etc.'!!!!
Thank goodness for us, the then LCC had a scheme by which Londoners could get 100% mortgages, without any enquiry into their wages/salaries. slightly higher rate of interest than that of bldg societies, but it gave us that first step onto the ladder.
That first home wasin Walthamstow East London - a Victorian end of terrace, outdoor loo, no central htg, etc. but it only cost us then £3950.00

We left there in 1972 for a new build terrace house in Loughton, Essex for which we paid £8.000 (selling the one in Walthamstow for six grand. Only stayed there for four years as the birth of twins made it much too small. Moved back into the GLC area in Waltham Forest to a large, Edwardian semi which cost us £21,000.
When I sold that many years later in the new millenium it sold at £330.000.
Daft amounts and that first house in the now gentrified Walthamstow, now divided into two flats each of which cost three quarters of a million pounds.

When we moved four years ago I came across correspondence from the building society about the first mortgage we had, in 1972/3. There were letters from: them almost monthly, or two-monthly to inform us that the mortgage rate was going up yet again. I think it started at 7% and went up to 8% before we’d even moved in, then kept climbing and climbing.

What’s the point quoting these figures when they are not the same in today’s value? (Cheaper albeit).

No point at all but interesting all the same.
Shows how inflation has affected things but also a little insight into why young people today view us as lucky.
Low house prices, low mortgage repayments, but also low wages/ salaries compared to today.

It’s nice to reminisce. My thoughts were that Mortgage rates went up to 17.5%. We were living on beans on toast and panicking when the kids needed new shoes. Always a bit envious of friend whose husband worked in a bank and I think their rate was something like 2%.

Yes, I remember receiving a letter from the Abbey National informing us that with interest rates being 16.5%, we would never pay off our mortgage. Fortunately the rates did go down.

Franbern, my first job at 16 was in the Home Loans division of the Greater London Council, which carried on the scheme you talked about after the LCC became the GLC! There were checks on salaries, but the difference was that the mortgages were granted on a certain multiplication of higher and lower salaries regardless of whether the higher earner was male or female. The other qualification was that the applicants had to have been refused a mortgage by 2 banks or building societies.

It is lovely to hear about someone who benefitted from the scheme. In fact my OH and his ex bought their first house exactly the same way!

We bought a brand new Barratt 3 bed link detached just outside Durham. It was 1972 and the house was £5950, but we added the freehold, bringing it up to £6250. My salary wasn’t included, even though DH and I were both working two jobs - at times, we were like ships that passed in the night!

My mum said her new front door cost more than their first house 😳