Mortgage anxiety!!

How long is your mortgage term? We have similar, but over 10 years as we want to pay back asap so could extend the term if one of us was out of work.

This is quite funny because this is our mortgage payment and we did become pregnant with twins and our house does need a new roof.

A lot depends on life stage 3k/8k is different with 2 kids in nursery versus 2 kids in primary.

That seems like a £600k mortgage. Ours was higher than that but we first took it out but we took it for 35 years and at a time when interest rates were a lot lower and that does make quite a difference to monthly payments. I’d have been panicked paying £3k a month but given house price and interest rate rises I suspect a high mortgage is beckoning more and more normal unfortunately.

I was anxious when we took ours out but a decade later, the debt feels smaller and our equity has risen. I am also quite happy knowing that we may need to use some pension pot to pay off the mortgage balance later on. If a high mortgage for you comes at the expense of paying into a pension I’d be less keen.

Talk about selective reading!

Ours is 1.8k against 7.2k joint income and that stresses me enough. Not so much the mortgage, but all bills and extra shite on top.

There has just been a feature in BBC1 about mortgages and the prediction was the mortgages won’t fall and may well rise over the next 5 years.

There are always lots of people saying “I wouldn’t feel comfortable with a mortgage less than 1.5k” etc and whilst I can understand that thought, if you are young-ish and buying a new property that’s just not going to be possible now unless you live in a place with very low property prices.

The OP can only compare it with the cost of renting (I live in London and average rents for 2-3 beds flats are 2.5k I think, and that wouldn’t be anything particularly luxurious) or the cost of buying something cheaper, but likely there just isn’t an option to only borrow 200k and pay back 1k a month because property doesn’t cost that anymore.

I wouldn’t bet on interest rates going down much over the next 5 yrs

I would only do that on a very short term mortgage as you'll be kicking yourself about how much you're throwing away monthly as the interest rates come down.

If someone is renting they do need to worry about getting pregnant, losing their job, getting ill. Why wouldn’t they?

50% of landlords don't have mortgages so interest rate rises don't immediately matter

And yet rents keep increasing 🤔

No it isn't. Renters don't pay for structural repairs and 50% of landlords don't have mortgages so interest rate rises don't immediately matter. You can also give notice and move out with nothing to pay. No estate agent fees, stamp duty or conveyancing fees to move.

Maybe it's just me but this sounds like boasting. As in "look how much I earn".

Then again what you are talking about is about 3 months income for our household. But thankfully we no longer are paying a mortgage. (there, that's my boast)

Our mortgage is a wee bit lower than that and we earn a bit more than you and it is worrying me at the moment.

Do you have any other debt?
How long would this mortgage deal be?
Do you currently have an emergency fund?
Are your household spending/ earnings likely to increase/ decrease after this period?

I would probably do it short term but would say no longer than 2 year deal

What if interest rates double? What if it needs a new roof? What if you get pregnant with twins? What if one of you lost their job? What if one of you became ill?
If you can manage all those scenarios...

Literally the same for anyone buying or renting…

Our income is around 10k and our mortgage just 850!

As I predicted 😆

This is MNs so the stock answer will be “we take home 20k and woukd feel nervous paying more than 1k”. But its 2024 & houses are expensive. How much would renting cost?

That would freak me out unless I had some serious savings as back up. Our income is around 10k and our mortgage just 850! But we bought before the latest crazy hikes in interest rates.

Personally, no. We take home around 6k between us, but I’m making 75% of this. Mortgage atm is £920/month, we’re still on a 1.49% fix for nine months though, so will go up.
I am conservative when it comes to financial risk. This, however meant that we could pay all bills when I was furloughed for a year. If our income was more even I’d probably feel happier with a higher mortgage, but like this, no. I know we could manage double as I’m overpaying this, probably even more, but I wouldn’t be happy with the risk if I lost my job or fell ill or something else happened.

We have similar proportion, but you can double both numbers. Probably our bills are more ‘normal’ range which I guess means they sre relatively cheap

We are debating making a similar decision (8k income, currently 1.5k mortgage to go up to 2.8k if we move). I was advised to try to live as if we were paying the higher mortgage for a few months to see if we could manage. Ideally we would want to save too so that was helpful to think this way. Our bills and total outgoings are around 6k including mortgage so a 1.3k jump would be doable.

We have a take home pay of 7700/m and our mortgage is 1000.

We have one cheap car owned outright that we share (not through want) and of our four children one is in nursery. A handful of pets and one (nearly free) holiday a year.

We don’t struggle day to day, but would be utterly fucked if one of us lost our job/couldn’t work etc.

Jesus...calm down

We make 9.5k monthly combined and new mortgage will soon be 3.5k, similar worries here but think a lovely home is worth it.

Depends. I mean the numbers were different but we always spent one third of our takehome on mortgage payments. Shortened the term if rates were low, then had the equity in the back pocket just in case hard times came back ( we lost hugely on our first house in the 1990s and it set us back loads)
If you have decent equity, I wouldn't stress too much about it.