If you’ve paid off your mortgage, how much is your house worth?

[Georgeinacan]

I often hear people saying they’ve paid off their mortgage on here. I wonder how! Ours is valued at 640 and we owed 300 ish. Obviously if it was worth 350 we would almost be mortgage free. Are people paying their mortgage off early generally in lower valued homes?

Surely the question is, how much did you pay for your house, not what is it worth? Many of those who have paid their houses off will have done so because they were able to buy before prices went crazy. I know of someone with no mortgage in a £1.4 million house, but the house was bought 25 years ago and they didn’t even pay a quarter of that for it.

Bought house for £209k in 2011 with about £65k mortgage when I separated from exH.

Now DH sold his house in 2017 when we were 47 and we paid off the mortgage. It was valued at £315k then.

We could have afforded to move somewhere bigger but we like the house and didn't really want the disruption just so his equity could be put into a house.

Instead, we invested the rest of the money from his house sale and started saving a reasonable amount as we could afford to.

It's now worth about £370k, which isn't very much compared to houses many people own by their mid 50s, but we're happy here. Now both my DS are at uni we don't need any more space, so are unlikely to move unless we want somewhere without stairs one day.

Sometimes I think it might have been sensible for us to move up the property ladder as we still live in what was my 'divorce house', which was the best I could afford at the time. The house from my previous marriage would be worth a lot more now.

But actually it suits us and we like having savings, which means we might be able to retire earlier than we would if we'd bought a bigger house. It's also cheaper to heat and council tax is lower than a bigger house would be, so no need to downsize to reduce running costs in retirement.

How old are you OP? From PPs responses you see that your thoughts of people paying of their mortgages is not solely due to them having lower value properties, but a complex mix of situations.

My DH, bought and sold for profit when interest rates were low, therefore climbing the property ladder. For some, in very different times, and to some extent today, property is an asset rather than just a roof over your head. That attitude on the whole is what drives many, rather than just being mortgage free.

Why would you need to have a low value house in order to pay off a mortgage? Simple maths....get mortgage at 25, will be mortgage free by 50. Paid off years earlier than that if making over payments

Are you in London?
It sounds like you moved to a larger property last year yet your children have left home?

Cheaper repayments, easier to overpay, easier to get on the housing ladder to start with?

Around £350,000 paid off about 5 or 6 years ago. I’m 50. DH received a very good redundancy package and he took early retirement

Surely most people who pay off their mortgage early are just high earners? The more you earn the more disposable income you have but you don't need to be buying ever bigger houses. So I would have through the opposite is true the higher the house value the more likely that the mortgage will be paid off early.

Mid 40s, paid off, but only worth about £170k.

To make you feel better, OP. House worth £900k and I still owe £640k 🤣

Many people get an inheritance or bank of mum and dad to help. Or live in a very cheap area. I’ll be paying mine to retirement age.

Ah ha - yes. This is one of those MN threads which are completely unrepresentative of the country as a whole!

You have a point here but I am sure many would say they are not high income earners but circumstances, determination, being child free,
small or large inheritances, large deposits and savings have allowed them to become mortgage free.

But, yes high income earners on the whole are more likely to be mortgage free, which in itself is a complex situation because high income earners are more likely to have investments and other assets that allow them to buy houses outright.

Hopefully this thread will give you some hope OP. There is light at the end of the tunnel!

I don’t think climbing up the property ladder is a cult! I have climbed the property ladder for a variety of reasons - mainly because I wanted to live in an area that I love and I am a rationale adult and can take well reasoned decisions about how to spend my money.

people have different priorities. That’s okay, but why sneer at people who want to spend their money on upgrading their housing? I don’t sneer at people who stay in their first home😊.

I bought a house in 1998 for £25K. At that time my salary was £7K, so it cost about 4 times my salary, plus I had some capital to put in from a divorce, so didn't need a huge mortgage. I then moved several more times. That first house came back on the market in 2020, I spotted it in the local property guide. I was doing virtually the same type of job, and then earning around £17K. (Admin and clerical NHS) However, the house was then £340K, so about 20 times my salary. This is why housing is so ridiculously hard for people trying to get on the property ladder, house prices and salaries are wildly out of sync.

I am mortgage free only because of substantial inheritance, which I chose to put into my house. The house we bought for £350K in 2005 is now worth about £720K according to estate agent valuation last year.

Because people that aspire, choose to do things differently and benefit financially are the bain of the UK mindset.

Yep house worth £870k ish, mortgage about £500k and we’re in our late 30s with the term currently running until we’re 70!

My parents however had a mortgage to pay off of around £80k and it’s now worth 1.5m.

Cost £200,000 in 1990, mortgage paid off 2010 now worth £1.25m.

Mostly its ppl who paid it off before it was worth a lot. For example our neighbours probably paid off the mortgage when it was around £200k now its £400k. So we won't pay outs off until we're on our 60s.

Eh?

You owe £300 so it doesn't matter what yours is worth unless you sell it to give you cash to buy another house with.

I don't care how much mine is worth. Although I do exclaim loudly "how much!" and pearl clutch at the prices they appear for sale.

Ah ha - yes. This is one of those MN threads which are completely unrepresentative of the country as a whole!

The housing threads always go like this, presumably it’s the age of the posters. My favourites are the “we earn 20k a month but would feel stretched with a 1k mortgage”

We bought our house for £500,000 with a £165,000 mortgage 30 years ago. We paid the rest with equity from the homes we owned before we met.

After several promotions and pay rises we were able to pay off the mortgage fifteen years later. The house is worth approximately £2 million now.

We have lived comfortably, but not lavishly and we have never had any debts apart from the mortgage.

Expensive cars holidays and designer clothes have never been our priority. Most of our money (after essentials) goes on creating a beautiful home, investing in our future and that of our daughter.

Wow, 500k in the 90s for a property is a lot of money. I am surprised it’s only worth 2m now.

We haven't had a valuation recently, so it might be worth more. It's a five bedroom detached house in a rural village near Denham.

We paid off by early 40s. Combination of always overpaying as much as we could (and not reducing payments when rates dropped) and using extra money from my job to make lump sum payments. We had no inheritance to pay it off.
When my income escalated we didn’t escalate lifestyle to match - we were never big spendy people and never felt any need to “keep up” with the latest car etc. I had colleagues who lived up to the max on similar incomes who still have mortgages.