Housing and mortgages in the past

[mary1947 2,090]

What is it with us in this county ??

Mortgage   rates up again  how do the young people who have mortage's with young children gas/elec bills manage to live,. but the person telling them about new rates is a multi millionaire. 

Then the next page of news 

Shows King Charles and wife at the races watching their horses win ???

I am not against equality but is this equality? but I do feel it for the younger ones. I wounder if they will let me have a mortgage? just seen this house in London and have fallen in love with it, not sure of the price but will appy for a morgage never the less. The house in fact has a name not a house number and it's called Buckingham Palace.  

[Jill Sparrow 10,319]

1 hour ago, mary1947 said:

What is it with us in this county ??

Mortgage   rates up again  how do the young people who have mortage's with young children gas/elec bills manage to live,.

Hang on a minute. What about those people, including yours truly, who had mortgages in the 1980s/90s when mortgage rates were 12%, 15% and at one period briefly 17%?  It was extremely painful but I don't remember hollering for government help to pay it.  Before signing the paperwork, I thought hard about what I was doing and calculated whether, in the event that mortgage rates rose steeply, I could still pay it. I suspect many people don't.  The mortgage was paid off years ago but now that I'm retired, it's nice to get a little more interest on savings which have been subject to derisory rates for years. Swings and roundabouts. It could be argued that savers have been subsidizing people with mortgages for a long time.

[philmayfield 6,194]

My first mortgage was around 16% and it was difficult to get one at the time. Current interest rates for savers are derisory. The banks are ripping people off.

[West Bridgfordian 144]

Got my first mortgage in 1974 and though I remember the interest rates being high, I can't remember we struggled. We never had to cut back on stuff for the kids when they came along. Never had a credit card in those days so didn't get in debt. TV was rented and we had a second hand washing machine and a tiny fridge.

Life was good.

[Cliff Ton 10,483]

I also remember mortgage rates of 14% - 15% in the 80s and 90s.

 

However the big difference between then and now is the cost of a house and size of mortgage.

 

A house bought in the late 1980s cost £30,000 (amazing but true...and it was a new-build). When rates were at their highest - 15% in the early 1990s - my monthly payment was £222.

 

To get the equivalent figures today you'd need to add several zeros everywhere.

[MargieH 7,613]

1966. 

Cost of our 3 bedroom end of terrace with lovely big garden £2800

Mortgage rate 4% (I think)

 

I think it was only the husband’s salary that was taken into consideration in those days, certainly in our case.

 

I feel it was when a second person’s salary was also considered that people could afford to borrow more, causing house prices to increase quite a bit.  Perhaps building companies and estate agents thought

‘If people can afford to borrow that much then we can raise the prices of the houses’ 

 

Or am I oversimplifying this?  It was just a thought ….

 

 

 

[philmayfield 6,194]

Squeezing the most out of customers is what business is all about. Very few can afford to go into business to be altruistic. However when a business appears to be doing well the competitors move in and the prices come down. It then comes down to who gives the best service. You only do really well if you control a monopoly or have a restricting patent.

[trogg 2,020]

My first house was a mid terrace costing £1500, monthly payments £10-6-8 stood it for 2 years and purchased a new build 3 bed detached. I was told by M in L how stupid I was to go onto debt, moved in 3 months later and the price for them then was £8500, did I buy at the right time.

[DJ360 6,733]

We bought our '3bd,det,integ grg,gdnft/bk' in Dec 1976 for £12825. Interest rates reached at least 16% as I recall and I was made redundant less than 2wks after exchanging contracts. We hung on through more redundancies, 2 kids, 4 years uni for me etc but got there in the end.

[Gary Baldy 17]

I recognise all these scenarios. First mortgage was a City Council one for £4500 on a £5000 house. Interest rates reached 17.5% at one point. I'm so grateful that my father drummed into me 2 things: firstly, make the roof over your head your priority, secondly, build enough leeway into your budget to guard against mortgage rates going up.  As others have commented, interest rates on savings are insulting - I get more from under the mattress

[mary1947 2,090]

We did not buy a house till we were in our 40s  as they would not give you a motgage taken wages into account Master's wages but me being a Hairstylist wages were rubbish master was earning 4 times more than me, Tips were a very big welcome sometimes i would get more in tips than what i would earn. The building society wanted both of you to be on good money. 

The house we finaly did buy was £12, 000  when it was first built it sold at £300/ £400 it was on one of the best roads in Hucknall  all the houses on the road had been built by a local Hucknall builder "Bodails"" not sure how its spelt. at the bottom of the road ther was built a Fairy tale bungalow this bodail built for his mum, there was also a covenat on the road, that the top of it would never be a though afair. We brought the house very cheap but it wanted hell of a lot doing to it. Rewiring /new windows/ the outside garage had nearly fallen down. When we switched on the water it came out of every were, as they still had all lead pipeing so this had to be brought up to date. The garden was very long and big but due to not being touched for a couple of years the weeds were 6-8 feet high. The house had belonged to an old couple who had lived there from it being built. In the pantry there was news paper on all the shelves,  now nothing was better to master that reading old news papers BUT underneath the paper was found £500 in notes. It made our day.

[Cliff Ton 10,483]

My parents never owned a house or paid a  mortgage in their whole married life; they always lived in rented.

 

They moved into the house on Clifton (council rented) when it was newly built in 1952, and lived there until the late 1990s, when they moved into warden-aided accommodation, which was also council rented.

[Jill Sparrow 10,319]

My father used to say that a bank would only lend you money to purchase a house if you already had the money in the bank. Catch 22.  My great grandfather bought number 12 Chapel Street in Beeston early in the twentieth century. It was a large, four bedroomed cottage, probably built in the Georgian era.  When he died, in 1934, his widow sold the property and then rented it back! My father lived there from the age of around seven until he married in 1949. Great grandfather John Samuel wouldn't have wanted a 'monkey on the roof' as a mortgage was termed. He was flush enough to buy for cash, although his large family saw very little of it.

[philmayfield 6,194]

I put a large sum of money into the Nottingham Building Society and requested a mortgage some months later. They refused me so I withdrew the cash and got a mortgage elsewhere.

Nottingham Building Society had a hot air ballon with their logo emblazoned on it. One day it landed in a field where I was passing and I could see the pilot struggling to control it. He called to me to help him. I told him ‘sort the bloody thing out yourself, you refused me a mortgage so I’m not helping you!’