[lady zed]

Originally Posted by Darcydog

My first house was bought for £10,500. and two years later we had mortgage rates of 14% and the three day week. I nearly lost that house and if it wasnt for my parents helping us out we would have done. Then things improved and we sold it for £23,000 and bought another for £34,000, extended the mortgage to over £50,000 to improve it.

Lived in it for 33 years - spent a lot of money doing it up over the years and sold it for £280,000 many years ago - downsized a bit and am now reasonably secure.

Sounds good doesn't it.

However- yet again - part way through those 33 years the economy hit rock bottom (again) and I lost my job and the house was valued at less than the mortgage we had on it.

The dreaded "negative equity" - had I not managed to get another job the house would have been repossessed, sold for about £40,000 and we would have had no where to live and a debt of £10,000 because unlike the USA where you just hand the keys back to the lender and walk away - here in the UK you still own any debt - negative equity is not funny.

Buying a house may sound wonderful - and it is now I have done it - but the security you have is not as great if you lose your job, and all the maintenance costs are yours - nobody else's.

Mortgages may be difficult to get but that is because the economy is still poor, BoE base rate is 0.5% which means that interest rates can only go up.

So if you get a mortgage today and your repayments are £600 per month - based on my experience - over the next 25 or 30 years - be prepared for those repayments to go up to £1200 a month or even £1800 a month.

Because that is what has happened in the past - and I am ruddy certain that it will happen again.

And very little good quality social housing available for those fallen on hard times through no fault of their own