To wonder if having a mortgage is worth it?

[malificent7]

If for example you have to scrimp and save for a deposit first...then earn enough for the monthly deposit.
It may mean giving up pleasures and treats in life such as nice food or a social life.
Also it means that many will stay in jobs they hate for fear of loosing a house.

I am aiming for a mortgage but has anyone decided not to get one in order to have a better quality of life. ( mad though that sponds.) I know that dp will gave virtually nowt left for treats if we got one which is going to be hard for 25 years.

Getting a mortgage has allowed me to take a pay cut and leave my horrible stressful job, because I'm no longer saving for a deposit and my mortgage is £200 a month cheaper than rent. Plus the rent kept going up; unless something dramatic happens to interest rates outside my fixed term, my mortgage will go down in real terms over the years.

Re care homes...if I go into one, presumably I'll be dead when I come out so I won't "lose" my house as I won't need it any more! I'm sure if I want to haunt it I can do that regardless of ownership. Inheritance perpetuates inequality and unearned wealth anyway.

It's worth it in the end.... When we bought our house our mortgage was the same as those renting next door. As we've paid it off and LTV has lowered we now pay less interest and our mortgage is £200 less per month than those renting next door.

I hated renting and paying someone elses mortgage.... Now we know that at the end of it we will own this house, or if we sell we will have quite a few thousands extra as a new deposit.

Rent more than mortgage wher i live so yes.

Renting is paying someone else’s mortgage off with no benefit to you. So you may as well have a mortgage.

I'm lucky enough to have paid my mortgage off and own outright, definitely worth it. How could renting be better?
Mortgages do come to an end and the house becomes yours, renting that never happens, if you can fund a mortgage I think you'd be daft not to.

I always had my own property, mortgage free at 48, on the other hand my sister lives in social housing and still pays rent. Guess who is so much better off? Yes, me!

Currently grateful to be renting due to the shower blowing up over the bank holiday weekend and taking all the plug sockets with it. Phoned the landlady and she had someone out the same day. Couldn't have done that if I owned, don't think I would have been able to spare the cash.

Yes totally worth it because even though our mortgage on a family home is larger than the rent we paid on a small flat we are building our assets rather than giving it away each month. And some LLs are nice but others are terrible and I hated dealing with them! Gives me more security knowing once it’s paid off I have this big thing we worked for. While it is very difficult I have seen people’s earnings typically rise steely and many folks my age (mid thirties) now upsizing from first homes to larger etc as they have kids. But having a first home even if not your perfect dream home gets you on the ladder to building your assets!

Dh retires in December at 58; the mortgage will be gone, and we can afford to live on his HM Forces pension. We won't have to worry about housing costs, apart from maintenance, CTAX, utilities etc.

I would be worrying if we had to rent.

My mortgage on my one-bed flat is £316 per month. The flat above mine (so without the conservatory or decent sized private garden) is £475 per month, so I guess mine would be £500-£525,

I live 4 miles out of town to the south. I have a friend who lives 3 miles out of town to the north who has a one-bed flat which has an identical layout but every room is half the size of mine and she has no conservatory. Her rent is £525 per month. She'd love to have a mortgage but hasn't been able to save a deposit, even though she earns £10k more than me.

People who say "my mortgage is cheaper than rent" - have they actually looked at the cost of ownership once they include the return on the money they would have got from that deposit. Particularly if the value arrives only in retirement - when you could invest the deposit in a pension.

For example, for a typical 3 bed house on my street, you need a deposit of 200,000 to bring the interest only portion of the mortgage below the cost of rent. 200,000 would today get you at least 12,000 a year as an annuity at 60, let alone if you retired later. As a pension you'd probably get a big tax advantage on that saving increasing it even more, and you still have to pay off the capital on that mortgage.

Don't just compare the mortgage paid to the rent, remember the deposit could have been earning a good return elsewhere.

People who say "my mortgage is cheaper than rent" - have they actually looked at the cost of ownership once they include the return on the money they would have got from that deposit

Yes we have. We both work in financial services and do thorough research on things like this. We are better off with our mortgage, without even taking into account the constant house moves we were subjected to when renting due to landlords wanting to sell or to move back into their property (three moves in 3 years, cost us over £1000 each time in fees/removals etc).

It definitely works out cheaper for me to have a mortgage - it's currently £577pm whereas to rent the same house (a 3 bed semi) in this area would be £1300pm! I would have had a far less pleasant lifestyle had we not bought when we did! Luckily we got a 95% mortgage so only had to pay £8000 as a deposit. The house has doubled in value over 11 years so it was best for us to buy!

I know two cases of couples who have divorced, sold their house and split the money and ended up with about £20k each after all debts and fees are paid. Both in their 50's and having to start again. I don't think thats a very good advert for paying into a mortgage for 25 years!

I don't think owning a house is as secure as people think. If circumstances change, then so can the security.

I like the flexibility of renting and we also just got a new boiler and washing machine with no cost to us.

Used to think a mortgage was great because people always said it was a fraction of renting, cost wise.

Bollocks is it. But, one day, we will own our tiny flat. I'm so glad to not be lining the pockets of every Sheriff Fat man out there, anymore.

For us owning our own home is really important, we’ve both developed ill health and feel at least when the mortgage is paid off we won’t have to worry about trying to find money for rent etc. It’s some form of security.

Well our mortgage is only a little bit more than our rent was in our last place... but we were renting a one bedroom flat and the mortgage is for a three bedroom house so I definitely think we have a better quality of life now we have so much more space!

But a mortgage term doesn't have to be 25 years. So you could pay less and do 30 years etc or overpay and reduce it down. A mortgage term is ever changing throughout its lifetime. So if you feel 25 years will mean you wont have much quality of life OP then dont do 25 years.

In my area houses to buy and rent are very reasonable. We have a mortgage on a three bed semi with huge garden, double drive, lovely new extension with kitchen/diner/playroom for £590 a month. It’ll be paid off by the time I’m 50.

To rent the same house would be £700pm in my area but the rent would never end. I’ll have a lot of disposable cash when the mortgage is paid off and an asset so yes it’s definitely worth buying.

Worth it for me, I’ll be mortgage free one day and can enjoy travel in my retirement or help
My children.

It is worth it. My first mortgage was £101 pm years later I moved out of the old marital home and bought a house by myself with a mortgage of £250 a month. If I was still there I’d still be paying £250 a month whilst rents for similar are around £800 pm. So how is paying more and getting less aever a good idea?
I sold up, married my now husband and his mortgage was almost cleared when he got his pension lump sum. We will enjoy our retirement mortgage free. How is that not a good thing?

I think it's well worth it. Our mortgage is currently less than the rent would be and if all is well we will have a house that we own at the end of it. I don't know how we would afford rent when retired.

Hopefully it won't go on care home fees and then our DC will inherit some capital when we've passed away which will help them out and they won't need to worry about how we will afford rent etc

I think if you are planning on staying in an area for a while and you can afford it, it makes sense to buy if you can. I don't understand the argument of being 'trapped' with a mortgage because if you didn't own you'd still have to earn money to pay rent (which goes up all the time quicker than mortgage payments usually). We have finally managed to buy somewhere, we could never afford to rent somewhere of a similar standard where we are. It's so so hard to save a deposit while renting though which I think is what most people struggle with. Also there's the issue of not being able to decorate, have pets or do anything you want with the place really that gets annoying after a while.

I do agree it's not a good idea to stretch yourself to the limit with mortgage repayments though, we bought well within our budget as we didn't want to struggle to pay each month if something were to happen (one person gets made redundant or whatever).

For us, totally worth it.
Me & DH didn't take out a mortgage together till we were 32 (didn't meet till I was 29) but it meant that we had enough savings pooled for the deposit.
12 years and two kids on, and our house had risen in value by 90k which allowed us to upsize to our 'forever' home last year. We did have to take out a new mortgage, which means we will be retirement age by the time we've finished paying it off. I can live with that. At some point we hope to start overpaying to bring that down as well, but right now I still work part time so its not an option.

I just checked, and what we pay on the mortgage is the same as renting an equivalent home in our town. I'd much rather be putting that towards our own home than paying off someone elses.