What age will you be mortgage free?

[SkelatorIamNot]

DH thinks most people are mortgage free before they are 50. I think most people are paying off their mortgage into their 50s and actually a lot of people in their 60s.

So just a quick poll to see who is more realistic here.

39 (me) and 40 (DH).

60, DH will be 65

With normal payments it should be 63 but it’s one of my main things on my mind so have overpaid since lockdown and just continue to make the overpayments and increase when I can in line with salary increases. Need to sit down and figure out when it should hopefully be repaid ahead of the default age

I was 43 and DH was 45.

There are so many variables though. How old you were when you first bought a property, were you buying as a couple or single, what proportion of salary the mortgage was and the loan to value ratio over time. PLus what happened to mortgage rates in that period.

I didn't buy (in London) until I was 42 so hardly going to be paid off by 50! My mortgage was 5x my then salary (terrifying as I was and am still single) and the first mortgage was 5.44% though that dropped in the following years when I remortgaged and my LTV went up.

To answer your question I will be 67 if I stay here, but I actually want to move and may need to borrow a bit more to do so and then my repayment date may stretch even longer. Plus I have to work past stage pension age anyway as I don't have enough private pensions to live on. On the other hand I have friends who bought young, are high earners and and have had big inheritances so paid off by 50, comfortably retired by 60. I have a friend in her early 40's who will be mortgage free in 3 years, because she bought in a cheap/rough area outside London, has had big pay rises to allow her to overpay, and benefitted from low interest tracker mortgages rates for 10+ years (at one point her mortgage was less than 1%).

These days paying off a mortgage before 50 is going to be increasingly rare, especially in London and the SouthEast and other hot spot property areas.

I will be 39 or 40, DP will be 46 or 47. We’ve not been blessed with children and unlikely to at these ages now, so we’ve not had the additional expense of those that have all the associated costs of kids.

First time, 45. Second time, 63 (this summer)

Bought when 30, upsized twice, paid off at 49. But We did overpay when we could.

Planning to be by 50 but worse case will be 54

Paying it off this month at 40 but looking to move house and put another £200k plus back on 😔 would happily stay put but need to move to be closer to schools that can accommodate my SEN kids.

We’re mid-30s, aiming to pay off the mortgage by mid-40s (overpaying).

Pretty much everyone else we know had significant parental help with buying property though, from giving them a deposit up to and including financing the whole thing.

I’ll be 53, DH will be 56, although we did take a 30 year mortgage.

We are lucky as our mortgage is quite small, and in theory we could pay it off in full now, however we are currently in the process of deciding whether to move or not. Do we want a big monthly payment and our dream house or do we want more spending money and to stay comfortably where we are. We aren’t sure.

Ah…. I will be 74 and DP 76…. Hopefully we can overpay at some point in the future… (need to get 3 kids thru uni first… 😵‍💫)
A series of bad financial decisions delayed us buying our house….

Last month. I’m 51, DH (just) 58. It would have been 13 years, though, if we’d followed the mortgage schedule.

I'll be paying it off this year (only due to inheritance), and I'm 40.

I’ll be 50 and my husband 55 - it should have been 44 & 49 but we moved a few years ago after spending 10 years miserable in our old house which obviously cost more so had to up our mortgage terms but it’s worth it for the house !

Probably late 50s. All on my own - didn’t buy until I was 32 and never had any family money (through combining finances with a partner or inheritance etc).

What do you plan to do when you retire? Will your pension be sufficient to carry on paying rent?

we are aiming for before 40 but hoping it may be sooner!

As things currently stand, well both be 65. We increased the mortgage recently to renovate. However, once DS is out of university we’ll look at overpaying. I’m hopeful that we’ll have it paid off by the time we’re 60.

Would have been 47/55, but we moved to a bigger house, so now 56/64.

We reckoned the extra money on the mortgage was worth having way more space with teenagers- especially if they can't afford to move out at 18.

Dh left home at 16 and I vividly remember the horror of moving back home (briefly) after uni and having to live in the box room of a tiny 3 bed semi again.

Paid mine off in February 2025, so it's been nearly a year mortgage-free. I was 37, now 38. My DH was 36, now 37. And now with our first baby on the way, the timing was immaculate as we can put more money on baby seeing as it's not servicing a mortgage anymore.

In contrast, one of my neighbours is somewhere in their 60s, maybe 70s, and one of them is still working, the other is retired. They rent. It's not good to be spending retirement renting, but to each their own, I guess. Rentirees (I think that's the term for that).

67, but I want it over paid and done by 63 and then I’ll retire or go part time until state pension kicks in. That’s the plan but who knows (should get some inheritance but you can never count on that so not factoring it in)

I would have been 50 if I’d paid my first mortgage with no overpayments. In the end, I sold, used most of the equity to
travel and retrain and started over at 33, so that would have been 58, but whoops, I did it again in my 40s. I took my last mortgage out at 52, with a 15 year term, but downsized and paid it off (and went travelling again) at 60.

My younger brother was mortgage free in his early 40s (bought in his late 20s, never moved, overpaid as much as he could afford) and my even younger sister in her late 50s when she downsized from the house she bought in her late 30s.

I will be 51, DH 61