If you’ve paid off your mortgage, how much is your house worth?

I don’t think climbing up the property ladder is a cult! I have climbed the property ladder for a variety of reasons - mainly because I wanted to live in an area that I love and I am a rationale adult and can take well reasoned decisions about how to spend my money.

people have different priorities. That’s okay, but why sneer at people who want to spend their money on upgrading their housing? I don’t sneer at people who stay in their first home😊.

You have a point here but I am sure many would say they are not high income earners but circumstances, determination, being child free,
small or large inheritances, large deposits and savings have allowed them to become mortgage free.

But, yes high income earners on the whole are more likely to be mortgage free, which in itself is a complex situation because high income earners are more likely to have investments and other assets that allow them to buy houses outright.

Hopefully this thread will give you some hope OP. There is light at the end of the tunnel!

Ah ha - yes. This is one of those MN threads which are completely unrepresentative of the country as a whole!

Many people get an inheritance or bank of mum and dad to help. Or live in a very cheap area. I’ll be paying mine to retirement age.

To make you feel better, OP. House worth £900k and I still owe £640k 🤣

Mid 40s, paid off, but only worth about £170k.

Surely most people who pay off their mortgage early are just high earners? The more you earn the more disposable income you have but you don't need to be buying ever bigger houses. So I would have through the opposite is true the higher the house value the more likely that the mortgage will be paid off early.

Around £350,000 paid off about 5 or 6 years ago. I’m 50. DH received a very good redundancy package and he took early retirement

Cheaper repayments, easier to overpay, easier to get on the housing ladder to start with?

Are you in London?
It sounds like you moved to a larger property last year yet your children have left home?

Why would you need to have a low value house in order to pay off a mortgage? Simple maths....get mortgage at 25, will be mortgage free by 50. Paid off years earlier than that if making over payments

How old are you OP? From PPs responses you see that your thoughts of people paying of their mortgages is not solely due to them having lower value properties, but a complex mix of situations.

My DH, bought and sold for profit when interest rates were low, therefore climbing the property ladder. For some, in very different times, and to some extent today, property is an asset rather than just a roof over your head. That attitude on the whole is what drives many, rather than just being mortgage free.

Bought house for £209k in 2011 with about £65k mortgage when I separated from exH.

Now DH sold his house in 2017 when we were 47 and we paid off the mortgage. It was valued at £315k then.

We could have afforded to move somewhere bigger but we like the house and didn't really want the disruption just so his equity could be put into a house.

Instead, we invested the rest of the money from his house sale and started saving a reasonable amount as we could afford to.

It's now worth about £370k, which isn't very much compared to houses many people own by their mid 50s, but we're happy here. Now both my DS are at uni we don't need any more space, so are unlikely to move unless we want somewhere without stairs one day.

Sometimes I think it might have been sensible for us to move up the property ladder as we still live in what was my 'divorce house', which was the best I could afford at the time. The house from my previous marriage would be worth a lot more now.

But actually it suits us and we like having savings, which means we might be able to retire earlier than we would if we'd bought a bigger house. It's also cheaper to heat and council tax is lower than a bigger house would be, so no need to downsize to reduce running costs in retirement.

Surely the question is, how much did you pay for your house, not what is it worth? Many of those who have paid their houses off will have done so because they were able to buy before prices went crazy. I know of someone with no mortgage in a £1.4 million house, but the house was bought 25 years ago and they didn’t even pay a quarter of that for it.

Bought our 3 bed house in 2005 when I was 20 and DH 27 for 85000 in a quiet street in a Northern ex-mining town. Paid off mortgage in 2021 and worth around £150000 now. Never had the inclination to move, especially now it is exactly how we want, inside and out with every ‘mod-con’ we could want!

Paid off mortgage age 42 from divorce setrlement. Recently downsized to last home valued around £500k.

I do t really see the point of " moving up the ladder" merely for the sake of it

Same here

This obviously. Bought my flat in 1999 for 43 k. Now they selling about £265 k

Mortgage fully offset (we have an offset mortgage as DH is a contractor). Worth about £310,000. It's our second home. We've owned it for 10 years.

I get the 'how long is a piece of string' comments, but there's also something to be said for not overstretching yourself for a bigger/fancier house in the first place.

Paid off and worth £600,000 ish … we are late 50s though and got onto the property market in the early 90s.

There is no 'generally'.

People who've paid off their mortgage could just be old enough to have had one for long enough that they've paid it off, especially as often people in their 50s or older would have bought long enough ago that houses were a lot less expensive so easier to pay for.

Plus there's all the variables in income, inheritance, spending, house cost etc etc.

Very roughly, I think there's about a third of people in the UK who own outright, a third own with a mortgage and a third rent. So there's literally millions of people, in all sorts of circumstances, who have paid off their mortgage, some will have done this early and some just because they've had a mortgage for 25+ years and got to the end of the term.

If you put every spare penny into over payments in the early years it hugely shortens the term.

Bought for 118k in 2008, 75k mortgage paid off in 2014, valued now at 250k

Bought my house for £146K with an £84k mortgage when I was 24, always just paid the monthly amount and never overpaid. Last payment was about 18 months ago, when I was 45.
House now worth about £400k.