Are people who own their own homes or have a mortgage worried about bills?

[gotelltheoldmandowntheroad]

If you have a mortgage or own a house outright, does it usually come along with being okay financially?

Do you all have thousands in the bank? I assume you do because things come up like repairs and services that can be expensive.

So with the energy hikes and other cost of living issues, what happens? Do you know you will have enough to cover the bills? Or are you high earners along with owning?

If you couldn't pay your utility bills would that mean your house would be under threat?

I know nothing about it all as no one in my family has ever had a mortgage.

There's too many variables and not all renters are poor just as not all homeowners mortgage free or not are rich.

How old are you that you think all home owners are rich?? And also.. people who rent are faced with the same issues as people who own homes right now

Yes we own a home and don't have much available money. Last year we had a huge unexpected repair which ultimately we had to pay for as if it got worse it would've lead to an even bigger expense.

We didn't have the money for it so we took out a loan (annoyingly it came weeks after we remortgaged so we couldn't do it that way) and borrowed some money from my parents. At the end of the day though if we'd been refused for the loan and my parents couldn't have helped we'd just have to have left it and hoped for the best.

I asked myself this very same question when I was in my early 20s. If you take out a 25 year mortgage at age 25, the payments are about the same as rent payments. As time goes on, the mortgages payments remain the same, whereas rental prices increase.
for example my FIL was paying £250pm mortgage payments on his 3 bed house 2 years ago, but thst £250 was a lot when he bought the house.

Plus the 25 year mortgage finishes when your 50 in my scenario above, a renter has to pay rent until they die as don't own the property .

When a homeowner dies, they leave a valuable asset or home to their loved ones.
A renter leaves a full house that the LL will want cleared out.

Yeah, the problem is some people don't have a choice to not rent. Rent is so high nowadays, many can't afford to save for a deposit and/or it takes them years. It's not a case of them not being worried about the future and just deciding to rent...

I was working full time when I took out my mortgage as a single mother to 3 teens.

Since then I have lost my sight, my driving licence (obviously) and my career, which I loved and have another serious progressive health condition.

Through no fault of my own I am now on benefits. Unlike renters who get housing benefit, I have to no help paying my mortgage.

I have medical equipment that needs to be on 24h a day.

I have to choose very carefully between heating or eating. My savings have been eaten up with living costs and paying for essential care and help.

I truly long for the days I could nip to the shop for a bar or chocolate!! Every penny really does count. I worked hard for my home, and I've been here 20 years and don't want to lose it.

I can't believe any adult even thinks that having a mortgage equals thousands in the bank or that there is a ready supply of money to pay bills.

Own outright but have no savings, earn decent wage but I’m still worried for the future

As for repairs etc I have to borrow money from my XH, put things on credit cards, do things on the cheap, ask my grown up DS to help etc

My garden is a shit tip, the decking is crumbling away and won’t last another year. Have been quoted £14k to replace it. Not going to happen.

Ive had a mortgage since I was 21(days of 100% mortgages,

yes those days are gone

Yes, I am worried but I have made allowances.

Bath times are now reduced, mortgage overpayments will be reduced to compensate for energy bill increases.

Changed vehicle to EV and have started to turn off all appliances at the plug.

Small things can make a difference.

I own a house outright but am a single parent on an admin wage and am worried about the increase in bills yes.

I have no debts but I also have zero savings.

Even people with thousands in utility/ council tax debts can pay minimal amounts towards the debt if they show through a 3rd party (eg cab) they can't afford more.

Not true. It depends on circumstances. Mortgage/rent paid first then council tax this is a government tax collected locally. For heaven's sake pay it above any other bill after mortgage/rent. The whole we can't afford it bit won't matter if you work because the council tax department can and will do an attachment of earnings. The percentage rate is set by central government and if you owe more than one year they can run two collections at the same time. The only priority on your wage above council tax is child maintenance payments, they get in first.

www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/council-tax/council-tax-attachment-earnings-orders

Just to give you an idea of what those figures are.

How old are you that you think all home owners are rich??

tbf a young person probably assumes older homeowners have seen their assets increase & younger ones need to be earning well/have family help to become homeowners.

No council tax first as you can go to prison for that, then mortgage, then utilities.

You can't lose your house for failing to pay one utility bill but if you were in arears and couldn't agree a suitable payment plan the utility company could go to court and get a charge on your house and occasionally even force the sale of the house. It is rare though, generally if possible they get an attachment of earnings or to send in bailiffs to take possessions.

Gosh, your dad must be minted to own his house outright. I thought none of your family had ever had mortgages.

Hi Daily Mail.

Mortgages used to be stress tested to see if you could afford them if interest rates went up.

That was on the assumption that bills would increase - but not by £2000 - £3000 a year. I hate to think what interest rate rise percentage that is equivalent to.

If someone said that mortgage rates would rise by 10 - 15% a year, there would be panic.

We own our own home but are moving into the caravan in the winter.

Nope in our personal bank accounts we are running on zero at that end of each month.

We do have a business with retained earnings we can draw upon but that money is in there to shore up the business in tough times and quiet periods. That pays our wages and being in a quiet time atm it’s slowly being chipped away. We usually have a lot of work come in end of summer / autumn so fingers crossed it doesn’t stay quiet or we will be in loss this year and still running on zero.

Don’t currently have a kitchen so need to be able to draw something substantial to pay both the bills and for a kitchen.

Fingers crossed 😬

Not really- I wouldn’t say usually especially not for younger people. But it varies.

Bit mystified why you don't seem to know what mortgages are. They're loans secured on the place you live in. So just like every other loan, the lender will recoverr unpaid debt, in this case by repossession your house. Many homeowners are not rich, and many have hugely overleveraged themselves thinking interest rates of 0.5% would be around forever. Landlords are in the same position if they have mortgages on the let property, the repayments go up with the rates and they'll either raise the rent or sell if there's no way of getting anyone to rent. We're all basically pretty fucked.

Sorry that should say yes… worried.

Nope is to the does everyone have thousands of savings!

I own my home outright. When I divorced I took my share of what was left after the mortgage was paid off and moved to an area of the country where I could afford to buy outright and started over. It was incredibly hard to do that, but I made a good decision.

I'm very cash poor, my ill health and caring for my elderly mother has resulted in things being difficult (but not insurmountable). My savings have evaporated, and I'm slowly building up a business and just hope nothing drastic happens that needs loads of money being spent on it before I've managed to start saving again.

So yes, I worry about bills, but at the same time feel that I am so, so lucky not to have rent or a mortgage to pay because with my circumstances as they are that would have completely broken me.

Owning a house is different expenses to renting. Roof leaks on your rented house-you expect the landlord to sort it out ASAP.
It goes on your own house and you have various choices:

1. mend it yourself
2. Live with it - and the potential damage it's causing
3. Put it off for a short time until you can afford to get it mended.
4. Get people in to mend it. You have the choice you you ask, when they come (subject to their availability) and what you do.

But you may have other things that need doing. This is need really before want. For example at the moment we have the following, all of which could do with being done:

1. Redecoration of the kitchen after a roof leak (probably can do it ourselves, although there's a bit of plastering needs doing)
2. Downstairs toilet is leaking(I've stuck plumber's putty over the worst of the leak but we've decided rather than just get it mended we'll replace the beautiful 70s blue toilet, so that's a hopefully next year job)
3. Garden. Put it this way, our neighbours said they were admiring our wild garden and the bees... (we've decided to bite the bullet and use G-Aunt's inheritance to get that done)
4. Driveway needs doing (looks bad but isn't dangerous so put off)
5. Soffits need replacing (they're rotten, but not causing issues yet so put off)
6. 2 of the windows have blown (that's not going to happen in the near future)
7. About 1/3 of the windows are still the original 70s single glazed with (rotten) wood. (That's going to have to be done in the next year before they fall out!)
8. Front and back door need replacing ideally, again original 70s, and not particularly good original 70s (I repainted them last year and that will have to do)
9. Kitchen roof leak sorted-that took about 3 attempts as no one was sure what was wrong.
10. Porch roof replaced (wasn't quite leaking, but close!)
11. Hall, stairs and landing carpet replaced (it wasn't just threadbare, it was actually worn all the way through in parts!)
12. I repainted the front, back and garage door
13. Fences replaced after they blew down

And then there's obviously little jobs like replacing the curtain rail that broke etc.

But the thing about owning your own house is you can, to a certain extent choose when/if you do it. Things like the windows that have blown. It looks a bit rough, but they will work, and they are lower priority than the roof leaking which was causing further damage.

No, we don't have "£1000s of saving" but we do have an emergency fund for things like if the boiler went-or the car, and the car is far more likely than the boiler .
But what we do have is the choice to say "we will live with it because we don't have the money" or do a botched job that is okay for the time being etc.
We've a tracker mortgage, so have been paying very little, but it's rising. So we don't know how much we'll be paying this time next year.

Buying a home is a choice.
Renting isn’t.

If it was easier, cheaper, more secure etc to rent rather than buy then everyone would sell their homes and just go into rented accommodation and housing prices wouldn’t be so expensive as no one would be buying.

Having a mortgage is always more preferable over renting.
You are always worse off renting.

Everyone is in the same situation regarding energy prices but those with mortgages have a lot more options than those that rent do.

Things change so much. I was renting fairly cheaply with cash in the bank, then I bought outright and had other debts, which was more expensive and money I was expecting didn’t get paid to me, so I mortgaged my property and paid them off. Then covid reduced my income by two thirds and I was getting by, and now everything has gone up so much and my income is further reduced and we’ve fallen well below minimum wage income, although my outgoings are reletivley low, so I can just about make it work in the short term.

If you just looked at the homeowner status, I was way better off renting. But it’s far from a fair picture, as so many other things changed as well. I‘m unsure whether the emotional comfort of paying off the mortgage is the best use of the money when looked at objectively either.