To think having a house with a mortgage is not 'owning your own home'

[easternuts]

We had a mortgage for 30 years before paying it off recently on our modest home. Now we consider ourselves home owners.

Dd rents because she doesn't want to pay the bank more in interest than the cost of her rent is. Yes her rent can go up but so can your mortgage.

I've had friends of mine make snide comments that dd is going on another holiday when she doesn't own her own home. This is as opposed to their own children who have recently bought with 95% or 90% mortgages in a part of the country where a 3 bed house is less than £150k.

AIBU to think that you don't own your own home just because you have a £15k down payment. DD has far beyond what is needed for a deposit but it makes zero sense in central London at present.

This thread is amazing. Even from the OP, unable to appreciate that after 30 years of paying a mortgage, OP owned a capital asset outright. And after 30 years of paying rent, you do not.

No one can predict the future, but past trends indicate that home ownership is a good bet financially and for stability. Just like any investment, circumstances differ.

You own your home with or without a mortgage. You can change lender and still own the property. You can rent it out; you can take in a lodger. You can extend it, modernise it, raise the value. You can pay thousands and thousands for dull, essential repairs that you'd rather not undertake.

Of course it is up to the OP's dd what she would like to do. She may not want to be tied to property ownership right now, or ever. That's a perfectly valid decision, even if it costs her more, she may prefer the flexibility. Lots of people spend more money to live the life they choose.

All the best to her, wherever she lives.

But, yeah, she would own her own home with a 95% mortgage.

My friend lives in a very old rented house. Sometimes it needs repairs which can be expensive. These costs obviously get paid by the landlord from her rent payments. Many people struggle to pay large mortgages without being able to afford to set aside a large fund for potential expensive repairs. Then there are people with expensive properties who end up incurring large inheritance tax bills after they die. There are pros and cons to the ownership / rental decision.

I'm wondering if there are differences between the nations regarding who holds the deeds. I'm in Scotland and had to engage a solicitor to retrieve the deeds from bank (First Direct). This was within the past five years and it was to allow the solicitor to confirm to the (Scottish) Land Registry the title was mine and have it registered as such on my behalf.

I had to fill in legal form recently and it asked me to tick a box:

1. Home owner- no mortgage
2. Home owner with a mortgage
3. Renting
4. Staying with family/friends

So there you go- "home owner" with a mortgage. If the bank owned my home it would have said:

1. Home owner- no mortgage
2. Non home owner- bank owns your home

So there you go.

Does your bank pay for repairs on your house?

No? Then they don’t own it.

Homeowners are the legal owners of their house.

It is bought through a loan. If you can’t pay back the loan, you may have to sell your only large enough asset ( house) to raise the funds to pay it off.

The fact that you sell the house, tells you that you own it.

The fact that you sell the house, tells you that you own it

Exactly- how can you sell something you dont actually own? if the bank owned it then they would be the seller, not the person living in the house and they would be the one to sign the legal papers. Bloody hell, this is hardly rocket science

in my heart, I understood it was not mine whilst the bank held a charge over it.

In your heart, you did not understand what the deal was.

Those of us who are financially prudent think the way I do i.e. we don't own until the mortgage is cleared and the property is registered with no charge over it.

It's certainly wise to understand the nature of an outstanding secured loan but it's not financially prudent not to understand how mortgages work.

It’s more that in England and Wales there normally are no deeds. All properties are registered on purchase, mortgage, inheritance or receipt by gift. The deeds (if they exist - with a modern property they may not) have no legal power and the banks aren’t set up to hold them any more.

I’m fairly sure remortgaging counts as a registration event so for a bank to still have deeds in E&W, there would need to be a mortgage and that mortgage would have to be over 34 years old (1990-2024). You can see it’s unlikely.

Registration was done on a rolling basis across E & W with the last area being included in 1990. It is therefore possible to buy an unregistered property even today (e.g. the owners selling it inherited it in one of the last areas to require registration in 1985 and have lived in it without a mortgage ever since) but it will have to be registered by the purchasers.

I’ve just checked and Scotland seems to have brought in the same but later (between 1981 and 2014) so it’s more likely a property will not have had a qualifying event and will still have deeds.

There’s a list of when each area moved to registration if you are interested: https://www.ros.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/96823/new-land-register-counties-v4.pdf

I get what the OP is saying, you don't own it outright, but you are the legal owner. By saying you don't own it if you have a mortgage though is quite a simplistic and childish way to look at it. I can only imagine you'd say that if you were renting and if made you feel better - sorry!

You need better friends.

This. Saying well you dont really own just sounds like something someone would say if they rented and felt bitter and jealous about it.

That said, noone should judge anyone regardless of renting or owning as everyone's circumstances are different. But yeah, it does come across as envious to me as its trying to minimise what the person owns (or trying to take them down a peg or two) and legally, they do own it so it doesnt really matter how people feel about it, its the legal definition that counts.

Its like saying if you got married in a registry office "well you arent properly married are you?"

@CandidHedgehog thanks for that. It makes sense.

Not getting the answers you’re after are you. If you haven’t paid for something in full it’s not yours.

No, we just know how the law works. Which you clearly don’t.

No, because you’re not. I mean you think you’ve “arrived” now you owe a huge debt after living in HA property

But you have paid in full. The seller got his or her full consideration. The fact the purchase price was funded by your borrowing is neither here nor there.

Look at it this way, who is responsible for the upkeep. - have you tried approaching the bank to contribute when the fence blows down. If someone gets injured on your property who does that person sue?

The bank has a charge over your property. This means that if you don’t repay the loan they can recover the money from your house.

At no point does the bank have any rights or responsibilities associated with ownership.

I really despair how people cannot grasp the concepts of simple financial arrangements.

It's now been explained so many times that I have to think people are either trolling or attempting to face save even though they know now that they're wrong, even if they didn't before.

If you took out a loan to pay for a car would you say you didn't own the car? No, of course not and it's the same with houses. If you've bought it, you own it. If you didn't own it then you wouldn't be able to sell it. Mortgage or no mortgage is irrelevant.
But nothing wrong with renting and going on holiday. Your friends are rude.

Well if THAT'S what you're pissed off about, fine. You don't think there's anything to envy about owning a home with a mortgage. Fair enough, you're totally entitled to feel that way. But that person does own their home. It's not a matter of opinion. It's a legal fact. You can feel however you like about that fact, but it remains a fact.

This isn't quite right. You ignore the fact that it's a secured loan. I.e. the loan is secured against the property. The bank has a charge which means they can apply for an order to repossess the property.

Really? Where? Not in central London.

Find me a place where the rental costs are less than the cost of an interest-only mortgage - I bet you can’t.

I heard the other day that the elderly parents of a DD’s French friend, have just been evicted from the very nice home in Provence that they’d rented for 40 years. The dad is 80.

Another French friend of dd (living in the U.K.) is required to pay €250 a month towards her elderly dad’s care. Since he was always a workshy waster, she resents this extra expense very much.

I do think the traditional pattern of ‘everybody rents’ in some European countries is changing, especially since property prices rocketed over the last 20 years or so. In particular a Swedish friend, who’d lived in the U.K. and elsewhere for 30 odd years, didn’t even think of renting when she finally returned to Stockholm a few years ago, although it always had been the norm for the majority before. She bought a flat, and both her sons (with families) also in Stockholm, have bought their own homes.

The very fact they need to apply for an order to take the property indicates they don’t own it. A charge effectively means they have a right over your property in certain circumstances which they need a court to enforce. Still your property.

Why do you care so much? Are you Martin Lewis?

Yabu to care! Sounds like you are being defensive of your daughters life choices by demeaning others defining themselves as home owners, in your defence it also sounds like the people commenting are being a bit judgemental, call them out or find better friends