If Anyone bought a house 2007 has it gained any value?

[Flowersblue]

If Anyone bought a house 2007 has it gained any value?

Our hasn’t and also barely anything off the mortgage from 14 years ago basically may has well just rented.

Right call London and country mortgage brokers and book an appointment to talk through options. They are free wrote of market brokers.
Do it now.

Whole of market

I'm guessing that the mortgage is relatively small, original amount around £70k?

So unless the house value has actually dropped, you should have a lower loan to value now. Have a look at sold prices for similar houses in your area to see what loan to value you have now.

Has your income increased in the last 14 years, so you could afford to pay more off your mortgage? If yes, you can remortgage, get a better rate and a shorter term and you should start chipping away at the amount owed. Make sure you look for a mortgage with a low or no application fee as its not worth paying these on small mortgages.

And above all, make sure you are always on a deal. Never pay the SVR unless you've checked if you can save by remortgaging.

To balance all the 'we've made loads' we're in the NE and bought a detached 3 bed house in 2003 and sold it for £10k more in 2018. However, we'd halved the mortgage in that time. Friends bought nearby in 2007 and their house hasn't increased in value either. House move very slowly round here.

But it's completely normal at work for single people in their 20s to buy a house. And last time DBro visit from London he kept assuming large houses were blocks of flats. So, swings and roundabouts.

You can't change the past. We were locked into a 5.5% mortgage for a few years, which we did just before interest rates went down. Painful. Since then, we've always used a mortgage broker.

Contact a mortgage broker asap and rearrange. We currently pay around 2%.

One day, you will have paid it off. Renters are at the mercy of landlords. You have stability.

Are you able to make overpayments? We may not have made much off our home (bought more recently than yours) but we will save so much by paying off early.

Yes, I second calling London and country. Try and pay off as much as you can afford and look for a lower term and lower interest.

Our house hasn’t gained a penny in value but our mortgage is coming down slowly. We have had to rent out our small house and rent a bigger one.

Also sorry, just reread my first post and it sounded arsey and unhelpful! I'll try again:

You can't change what you have already paid or not so don't stress about that. Going forward, it is a good idea to look for new mortgage deals every time your fixed deal is up. Speak to a free broker and work out the best deal based on the max you can comfortably afford.

We bought in 2007 (but have since sold). That house has gone up by about 60% since then (north of England).

First Direct are brilliant for mortgages, you can pay off chunks if you are able to and reduce your balance to comedy amounts, we were in a position to clear the mortgage a few years ago, but we couldn't clear the balance before the end of the life of the product, so we had repayments of £10 a month. Used to make us chuckle.

Some people are in this trap.

100% mortgage. Very high standard rate. Can’t remortgage as the bank says they “don’t earn enough.”

A friend of mine is on 6.25% interest rate and has been since 2008. Can’t do anything about it. Trapped.

She has made barely a dent in the mortgage and the house price has dropped.

I second (third?) London & Country. Totally free, done over the phone and via email, really helpful.
We bought our flat with a tiny deposit so had a similarly high interest rate, our payments dropped from £840 to £600 a month when we remortgaged.
If you can, use the money you save in interest to overpay each month, then you'll start seeing a real difference.

@Angeliana the FCA updated their rules in November, not all lenders have adopted it yet but Martin Lewis has been fighting for change to affordability assessments for existing mortgage holders for a while - www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/11/west-brom-mortgage-prisoner-freed/

Sounds like you had a small mortgage and smaller repayments because of the long term, the interest is stopping too much coming off quickly, you'll pay more and more off the capital the longer the mortgage goes on but switching to a lower interest rate will pay it off quicker. If I'm guessing right though you've paid less than £400 a month and ended up with 14k in equity so that's a lot better than you'd have done renting. Could you have rented your house for £400 a month in your area?

Why haven't you remortgaged to a lower rate?

I bought my first home in 1985.
Generally I have always made a profit, but house prices have also incesed dramatically.
My current home has increased in value by 25% since we bought it 5 years ago- but that is for local reasons.

5% interest is very high, you should definitely look at remortgaging as the rates on deals on offer at the moment are more like 1-2%! Look on the money saving expert website for advice.

As for prices, I just looked up our house, it was sold in 2004 for £135k, 2009 for 165k, 2017 for 260k and then to us in 2019 for 250k. So it actually gained value from 2007 but peaked around 2017.

@Angeliana tell your friend to look again, the rules were changed last year

Sorry to hear that OP. Definately take the advice given about calling London & Country.
In answer to your question, we're in Cambridgeshire. We bought in 2006 and sold 12 years later and it had risen in value by £78k. It was initially £234. We were with Nationwide.
As soon as our fixed term for the new house is over we will be getting advice about switching to a new lender.

Why haven’t you remortgaged? Because you didn’t bother it because you can’t (not being goody - the answer will change the advice).

If you haven’t looked into it before, speak to a broker ASAP and get a new rate!

If you can’t or couldn’t, speak to your bank to see if anything has changed.

Not remortgaged due to other things going on

Your repayment mortgage is basically front loaded. IE you’re paying much more interest than principal in the first years. As you slowly reduce the principal by small amounts the interest becomes less of the monthly payment that you are paying and more of the principal is paid off in turn. It can take some time for you to see the principal amount reducing. The long term of the mortgage and the high interest rate is obviously impacting this. As other PPs have said, there are some excellent mortgage deals available at the moment that will reduce the amount of interest that you are paying.

Right, so your initial borrowing amount must have been around £70k then. And you've paid off around a quarter. That's not so bad is it.

For goodness sakes remortgage though - 5% is way too high. And do it regularly - every couple of years. You don't even need to change lender. So make that your job this week. And I suggest you keep the repayments the same as now but reduce the number of years left. Get organised and it'll be paid off far quicker than ignoring it.

My 2 bedroom semi house was bought by me for £176k in 2007 & is now worth £275k.
I live on an estate in the South of England which is part owner occupied, part privately rented & a small part housing association.
It's near good schools, businesses, bus routes, the hospital, shops, pubs, parkland, the motorway & leisure centres.
A short drive from the beach, forest, and several towns. So a good location.

I've always had a fixed rate repayment mortgage. I now own about £175k of my house's value but I did have a big deposit.

Got to remortgage soon I think. I always stick with the same lender (as my wage is now much lower it's hard to find a different lender) & get the lowest interest rate possible with the lowest payment per month.

So my mortgage per month is about £360 whereas renting the same house in my estate would be £950.

@Flowersblue it's really quick to remortgage online