Should 40 year mortgages be banned?

I think a mortgage which goes into retirement will give people a lot more security than private renting at the same age.

Everything is designed to prop up prices and fuel continued rises. Extending the mortgage term, (lower mortgage rates too), partial ownership schemes, stamp duty holidays. You need to have people buying "affordably" as that feeds up the "chain" .

YABU and sound incredibly out of touch.

I’m old enough to remember Gordon brown suggesting this back when he was chancellor!
I am neutral about it. It could be a good thing if people are responsible about overpaying at times when they have extra cash so they can revert to a lower payment say during the child care years. Over 40 years there’ll definitely be times when overpaying is easy and times when it isn’t .

Surely the actual fact that you need to take FOUR DECADES to pay for a house should have people asking questions.

Do you mean to say that one person would take forty years to build a house with his/her own hands?

Or twenty years with a friend and you help the friend build his/her? Or similar division of labour with a third person (brickie, decorator, sorting out utilities + planning permission...).

Dig into the economics, people.

Why dont you sell your rental properties OP, 25% below market value should do it. You can be the pioneer of reducing house prices.

There are so many variables in people's circumstances that I can't see any advantage in such a ban.

Funny that eh?

@DistinguishedSocialCommentator
IMO, 30 yrs is more than enough and there must always be a minimum 10/15% deposit and a 2 year record of saving money. This IMO, will gradually settle property prices.

Lucky for the rest of the UK you're not the person in charge.
How do you expect people to save when they are paying high rents?
(oh, just spotted who you are..... in that case )

I’m sure a number of people who take these 40yr mortgages on have every intention of overpaying along the way. Salary increases and inheritance for one. For some it is the only way onto the property ladder. I was lucky enough to be able to take on a 25yr mortgage, and I don’t envy those who have to take on much longer ones, but the option shouldn’t be removed.

I bought my first house at 27 with a 40 year mortgage and 5% deposit because it was the only way I could get on the property ladder. I bought a property I didn’t like because it was the best of the bad bunch. I bought my next house at 33 with another 40 year mortgage, although a 20% deposit. The term is long because childcare is expensive. I am still expecting our salaries to increase over time and childcare to go down, so overpaying the mortgage will become easier and we will be able to shorten the term.

Those options were the only way for me to buy a house I actually like and want to live in for a long time because people have bought multiple properties cheap as a BTL, rented them out for extortionate sums of money and driven up the market. This has been aided by consecutive governments failing to build more housing and more social housing, cap the amount private landlords can charge especially for such shitty housing stock. The banks will obviously be making more money from these longer term mortgages but they aren’t the ones driving the housing market.

I’m sorry but the fact you don’t know that endowment mortgages are no longer available shows how out of touch you are with this!

It’s a vicious circle. The easier it is to borrow money, the more people are prepared to pay. The more they are prepared to pay, the more sellers want.

40 years IMO is just fueling the price rises in property

As is owning more than one property, surely? How about starting with limiting the number of properties a person can own? Or is that not a good idea because it affects you?

40 years shouldn't be necessary but as most will be working for 55 years or even more then maybe it should be an option. I'd just prefer major reform of our economy and social system.

Oh dear. You again. 🙄

"FYI, we paid off on our own property and a couple of rentals about 14 years ago possibly a bit more"

Perhaps take a second to consider your privilege here.

Can you really not understand that the world has changed, house prices are way, way more than when you bought in comparison to wages.
Wages have stagnated. Rental prices are astronomical, everything is really expensive compared to 20-30 years ago.
This is why people are taking much longer mortgages with much less deposit. It’s not hard to understand 🙄

Exactly. As someone who has had to take out a 35 year mortgage recently just to afford a modest property, I won't even consider the advice of someone like OP. You have no idea what it's like now.

You can only get a 40 year mortgage if you’re under 30 anyway so I don’t really see the issue tbh. I think the most I’ve ever had is 35 years but we’ve got less now as my husband is older.

i don’t see the issue, we’ll all be working forever anyway and it’s nicer to have more money now , in the years that you need it with the lower payments.

If 40 year mortgages fuel house prices then it's not positive.

House prices have to get to reasonable levels and government should interfere to force builders to release their land banks to build houses.

I also think private landlords need to be capped with councils and non profit housing associations taking over so private landlords are in the minority.

We bought our first house at 21 and took out a long term mortgage. We’ve lowered the term over remortgages and will overpay once our children are a bit older but it helped us get on the ladder. Early repayments are easy to make.

No, people should have the option. It’s hard enough for people to get on the housing ladder atm.