To ask if you own your home outright, how much is it worth?

[Ujjj]

I’m trying to work out whether we are being idiots by not just downsizing to be mortgage free. DH seems to think mortgage free means settling for less in most cases as you could just go on and on borrowing for bigger. I like having a reasonably big house but with that comes a hefty 250k mortgage. Are those mortgage free usually owning less than 500k homes? We are in our thirties for context.

We were mortgage free by our 40's which meant we could save heavily for our next house which we then bought outright (a couple of years ago).
Value has not really risen since buying so still probably worth about £550k.

Being mortgage free for so many years also meant we could concentrate on pensions which enabled us to retire in our mid-50's.

House £750k. Mortgage was £230k. We are 51/53. We paid off the mortgage around 8 years ago. No inheritances, etc. involved, we just paid it off over 15 or so years.

I know it's easy to say now, not having a mortgage, but I don't see the rush to get it paid off asap unless it specifically makes sense for your circumstances. And there are many circumstances where it doesn't make sense...

For instance if you're, say, mid/late-40s and paying tax at 40% and not maxing out your pension, instead of a £500/mth overpayment on a 5% interest mortgage you could put the same money into a pension and get 67% in tax relief for every penny you put in, never mind the growth of the pension itself which will very likely dwarf the 5% mortgage interest.

As an example, putting £500 (plus tax relief) per month into a pension, even if it only grew at 5% per year you'd have £100k in 8 years which you could get at when you're 55.

Overpaying £500 per month on a 5% mortgage would clear off around £50k in 8 years.

Whether to go mortgage free or keep upsizing or moving to a more expensive area is very much down to circumstances and what's important to you. Our mortgage was paid off in our mid 40s as the house was big enough for us, in a nice area and we wanted the mortgage gone by the time we were paying for our daughters to go through University. After that we focused on early retirement. Lots of our friends kept moving to bigger or more expensive houses but many of them are still working now to pay off the mortgages in their 60s whereas we retired at 58.

The house is now worth about £500k.

We paid our mortgage off 3 years ago when I was 37, it's worth about £160000.

I will never move, the opportunities & lifestyle we have now we're mortgage free are amazing.

Being mortgage free was an anchor for us. It sort of put us off moving to somewhere we would have liked better with a mortgage that we could afford. Finally we did take the step and enjoyed the change.

Im 32 and mortgage free, home worth about £600k. I'll be taking out a new mortgage for my next house though

Mortgage free, house worth circa £1.1 million, mostly by over paying but also by increase in value. Will downsize this year and enjoy spending for once!

We aren’t mortgage free but we are mid 30s and have a house worth 400k with 200k equity (midlands). If we wanted to be mortgage free we could get a 3 bed semi but we would be sacrificing the lovely privacy and location that we have now. We can afford our mortgage relatively comfortably so why would we live somewhere less desirable just to be debt free?

Downsized to nicer area. House worth 300k. I’ve been mortgage free since i was about 40.

Bought outright 30 years ago at 31. Lived in same house since then, 4 bed detached now worth about 500k, over 4 times what I paid. No intention of moving.

Numbers are meaningless in this type of thread, the point is what you can afford and how much space that gives you.

We have been mortgage free for some time; it has suited us for maternity leave, part time working with no risk etc. Putting more money into property might suit some, but we prefer not having to worry about bills. Sounds like your and your DH are not aligned on life plans, so you need to seek out a compromise.

Mortgage free at age 37, now 53, house worth £250k. Used spare money to work part time since aged 45 and travel the world. Also take unpaid leave to live abroad for a few months during the UK winter. £2500 “fun” money left every month after bills.

Mortgage free, early 50s, home value is 750k.

We paid off our mortgage when I was 41 and DH was 44 (we’re a decade on now). House worth approx. £550 - £600k. We bought it in our mid twenties for less than £100K though (spent more than that on extensions and improvements since, but even so…) - that was a big factor, as was not moving up the property ladder as our household income grew.

Never particularly prioritised it - pension was always #1, followed by living comfortably.

40yrs old, mortgage free, house worth £400k. Bought at the end of the last slump in 2013 and overpaid massively as we were both working full time, no kids and cost of living was relatively cheap. However about to upsize so will have a mortgage again. We have a child just about to start reception and this house is a little bit small (tiny kitchen with only space for an undercounter fridge, no freezer) with the rising cost and hassle of building to extend we may aswell just upsize (although we've upsized considerably in the end). Will have a £300k mortgage but we also have savings too so if we lost our jobs we'd be fine for a good while without defaulting.

It's all personal, can you service the mortgage without compromising the lifestyle you want? Do you like your house and neighbours? Do you like the area you are in? If the answer to all those questions is yes I think you would be daft to downsize to be mortgage free in your 30s. Xx

I’m in a similar position to you OP. We’re mid-late 30s and bought in an expensive area for the schools. My oldest hasn’t started primary yet and we’re now re-evaluating whether to stay here with a mortgage or to re-locate, reduce/lose the mortgage and potentially work a bit less to be with the kids more. Our mortgage repayments are around £1200 but will go up by the end of the year, it’s a dilemma because we’re not sure where else to go (we have been looking).

Mortage free at 45 - house worth maybe £200k (we're in Scotland so house prices much cheaper). Would love to be detached rather than semi-detached but not enough to want to have a mortgage again. Absolutely love being mortgage free! On a practical level, if we had upsized we'd be selling up due to my ill health now as I have cancer and DH looks after me so yes, the mortgage free years where we holiday'd five or six times a year are fabulous memories now and we wouldn't have had them.

Aged 44. DH 60 Mortgage free, house worth 600k and also own 2 rentals both mortgage free worth 300k each. We have been very frugal over the years, focusing on paying off the mortgages and minimal holidays. Now we are able to enjoy the fruits of our labour. DH would like us to sell all 3 properties and move to a a more remote location in a different county and buy 1 house for 1 million. I'm totally against the idea.

I’m 35 and DH 45 we mortgaged free our primary house just a month ago. Our house valued for £500k in cambridge. We still have mortgage for our buy to let house though. Planning to repayment that house now.

Mortgage free at 48. Now 56. House is worth £550 ish. Have pondered getting a mortgage to buy a bigger house/better house but can't tell you how glad I was I didn't during covid and seemingly being the only person in the UK unable to claim a penny in assistance.

Mortgage free. DH got a life threatening illness, critical illness cover paid off the mortgage. If you don’t have this cover, I urge you to reconsider. House worth about 400k.

not quite mortgage free have £39k to pay in the north west so cheaper houses worth £325k 3 bedroom semi but 3rd bedroom is small I am 47 can’t wait to be mortgage free however wished we had moved to a bigger house and stretched ourselves more when dc were younger I was part time for a long time but as they are nearly 23 and 19 now there doesn’t seem much point in moving to a bigger house in the same area as hopefully they will be moving out in a few years and I mean that in a nice way they are welcome here for as long as they want to be

Mortgage free by 40 . House is a big standard 3 bed semi in the SE worth about £450k.

We bought 20 years ago for £200k and decided that mortgage free was more important than upsizing . Now dc are grown that seems an excellent decision and we will probably only leave if needing care in old age

Pumping the mortgage money into isa and pensions so we can carry on having plenty of fun money once dh retires in next ten years

We'd have been mortgage free in a £280k house 3yrs (age 39) ago if we hadn't moved up. We are working hard to pay the new one off (worth £380k) in the next few years before I'm 45.

We have been mortgage free since our mid 30’s. First two houses were bought, extended, renovated and sold which left us with a very small mortgage on our 3rd home which we paid off. Husband is a builder. I think the house is worth around £500k although not had it valued .