To think having a house with a mortgage is not 'owning your own home'

Yes, third one on the list posted further down thread.

Mostly due to the oil and gas crashes, massive loss of jobs in the city - there's dozens of empty offices that used to hold thousands of workers no longer needed,just sitting empty. Gone are the days of the £5000 a day contractors spending thousands of pounds on client dinners whilst taxis waited outside with the meter running and everyone was driving around in the fanciest cars in huge new build homes!!

Yes I do know that the bank will then take possession and sell it to redeem the loan. This is why I continue to pay the bank back the money I owe them, secured against my most valuable asset, my house.

the fact you can lose the house if you default doesn’t mean you don’t own it. 🙄

Google says that these places have the highest fall in house prices:

It sounds phenomenally cheap. What caused the fall in prices? Economically deprived area? fewer jobs?

Where is this, if you don't mind saying? Roughly.

Roof Shark I had to google...He's actually a ''protest'' put up in 1980's! {I didn't know he was that old}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headington_Shark#:~:text=The%20Headington%20Shark%20(proper%20name,the%20roof%20of%20a%20house.

Oh that shark! I remember him...it was about 12 yrs ago -?

Sadly I think people only find out what mortgages really are when they come under financial stress and have to look into the details.

I guess you have found out that there really is one thing that you own when you have a mortgage.

I hope it works out for you in the future...

Most people also don't want to sell off parts of their garden, or adjoining paddocks either.

Do you seriously believe that is any sort of counter argument to the point I'm making ?

At least try to think about what you are saying.

When I had a mortgage back in about 2008, and the banks were in trouble, my bank (one of the big ones that got nationalised) rang me up and asked if I'd consider lending it some of the money back to them. That certainly didn't feel like I was renting my house from the bank 😀

Well, you say that....

Who on earth, unless they were actually deranged, would want to do something to their house that would ''materially devalue it?''

Most people also don't want to sell off parts of their garden, or adjoining paddocks either.

If anyone wants to free themselves from renting, buying IS a good move.

Don't know of anyone who regretted buying in England at any rate.

Okay - I will bite.

How is having a mortgage the same as renting from a bank? I assume you have read all the legal arguments on this thread explaining that the bank doesn’t own the house. But why do you disagree?

In Nov 22 mortgage rates were quite low.

Rents have gone up because mortgage rates have rocketed.

No, it isn't.

Is there actually an infinite number of ways people can fail to understand the concept?

I agree OP. It’s renting from the bank!

Sorry but this absolutely is happening TODAY.

One bedroom flat purchased at the grand old age of 22 with a 5% deposit for £105,000. In the "oil property of Europe" in 2013. You couldn't buy anywhere, every property was going for £20k, £30k, even up to £60k above asking. Every viewing, there were 5+ other people viewing at the same time.Every property was going to a closed bidding system, we bid on seven properties and didn't get any. We got lucky with the flat, due to an admin error on the advert nobody could contact the estate agents to arrange a viewing but I went into their offices to request a viewing and they had wondered why this one flat wasn't getting any interest.

Now, 12 years on and several oil and gas downturns later, the exact same flat was valued last year at £47k but (and I quote) "you'll be lucky to get over £42k".

Now this is not helped by the fact the town is a shit hole that's to our useless council and nobody wants to live here anyway, house prices have dropped so much people are no longer buying starter flats and are going straight into 3 bed houses and the fact there are 895 1 bedroom flats for sale within an 8 mile radius and we've got no chance. There is also no chance of prices going back up to what they were here, the place is done.

We did what everyone in this thread is screaming to do, get on the property ladder ASAP and we are totally fucked. We would need £25k to give to the bank to settle the negative equity, plus another deposit, plus solicitors fees etc OR we can mortgage ourselves up to the eyeballs, buy a second property and have to buy the wonderful second property tax. There is no way out of it. We're almost in our mid 30s now and short of a lottery win I don't know how we will ever get out of this.

So, whilst I agree that we technically own the home despite the mortgage for 30k odd more than the place is worth, I'd really much rather we didn't for all the fucking good it's done us. It has been the worst decision we ever made.

My LTV is in single figures now so I feel I am a "home owner", I paid for and own the vast majority of my house. Renting is dead money. I really wish there was a solution in this country, a lot of luck and timing went into my housing situation and it could have been so very difficult and different.

because a BTL mortgage is a different mortgage that’s why. You can apply for a consent to let to transition the mortgage from a owner occupier to BTL but a BTL mortgage isn’t a regulated mortgage firstly, secondly the rent charge has to be calculated to ensure it covers the icr, to ensure the customer won’t fall into arrears, and then the bank is failing its obligation to responsible lending (and it makes no financial sense fo lend to so a person who can’t pay the bill)

selling off the land is because you’ve used the property (including the land) to secure the loan so that just doesn’t make any sense. But if you had a large acreage that you didn’t need and it was on mortgage you most certainly could approach your lender and say you want to sell it, it would likely require a new valuation.

Guess what.

We paid the mortgage off a couple of years ago (I was joking about Barclays turning up for those hard of thinking) and the only thing I can do differently now is rent it out without having to change to a different mortgage product

I am still answerable to the laws of the land with regard to what I can and cant do with the house

I cant bulldoze it down, blow it up, start adding on illegal extensions or additions. I cant rent it as an HMO without the relevant permissions from the council. I can get a lodger just as I could before. I could get a pet, just as I could before, I can have friends and family stay just as I could before.

I can even change that god awful carpet thats been there since we moved in.

Agreed on the deterrent factor but from a governance and sales point of view, people should really be understanding what they are signing, it’s the whole point of suitability

It depends on the type and terms of the mortgage as they all differ, but usual possibilities are :

You can't rent it out without the banks permission or changing the details or terms of the mortgage. The bank may/may not allow you to do this.

You can't sell any part of it without the banks permission. For example selling off a proportion of the land.

You can't make any modifications that will materially affect the value in a negative way.

There are a number of other usual things as well, but you should look at the terms of the mortgage to see which ones may/may not apply.

I don't think it matters so much for people who have a mortgage as presumably they pay their payments and are aware that one day they won't have to pay any more.
It would worry me perhaps that one partner would not have their name on the mortgage and think that it didn't matter as the bank owns the house.
The more worrying thing is the people here who seem to think renting and paying a mortgage are more or less the same thing because they think that a mortgage means "owned by the bank". It might put people off, people who would actually benefit from having a mortgage.

For instance?

Man this thread is really worrying, there are so many people, by the sounds who have a mortgage but don’t seem to understand that they own the house. Super worrying that this wasn’t understood at the point of contract/ sale