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.

Do people really not understand how mortgages and home ownership work?!

You own your home from the moment the purchase completes. If you have a mortgage then you have to make repayments on a loan, but that doesn’t mean you don’t own the home. If you default on the loan then the bank can take steps to take possession and force a sale but there is an entire legal process required for that because you own your home.

If you’re asking whether home ownership is always the best financial investment a person can make, that’s a different question, and the answer obviously depends on the individual circumstance of the person making that choice.

You can invest the differece in ways which will increase in value more than a house increases in value.

There are no guarantees that investments will increase at all, let alone more than property.

I think just one person on here (OP) doesn’t understand how “owning things” works, but unfortunately she keeps coming back to argue she’s right and everyone else is wrong.

OP, I paid my mortgage off a while ago. If I’d taken out another mortgage later, to pay for improvements or to pay for a wedding or something, or even to buy another cheaper BTL house outright, would that mean I had owned it but then didn’t any more? Would I own the BTL property?