6% mortgage rates; trouble a'ht Mill

[Twiglets1]

This is a new 6% mortgage rates thread as the last one is almost full.

Thanks to KievLoverTwo for suggesting the second part of the title to reflect all the squabbling these threads are causing. Which could be a thing of the past of course. But realistically, it won't be.

You feel like that because it’s true @janicegarvey some people unfortunately do have the mentality where they WANT people with mortgages to suffer because in their mind we are “debt junkies” or whatever other derogatory term they choose to use. They wanted interest rates to go sky high, people to be unable to pay their mortgages & for the property market to crash.

They are very open about that on the HPC site but this is Mumsnet where most of us are just bemused by their attitude. As we see a house as somewhere secure to live & possibly raise children in. That may or may not appreciate in value depending on timing but wasn’t our main reason for buying 🤷🏼‍♀️

"Debt junkies" makes me laugh 😩🤣🤣 like we're all in 100s of thousands of pounds of debt on range rovers and Chanel handbags

My only debt is my mortgage and I owe about 99k
If I could have bought the same house for say £30k I would have done so but I don't have a Time Machine to 1995 sadly 😂

I have a credit card which I buy my food shop on every week or any bits and bobs for the kids etc . then i pay it straight off so I don't get charged any interest. I do this purely to keep my credit score high, which is ridiculous I have to do this

We'd need to know more about your circumstances to advise, a crystal ball would also be helpful.

You would need to work out:

Can you afford the mortgage? What percentage of your take home pay would the mortgage be?

Do you have any wiggle room if rates rise?

How does the mortgage compare to rent? If it is the same or slightly higher, you could still be better off with a mortgage unless interest rates soar. We are in a strange time at the moment with rising rents.

Would you be happy to stay there for the next 5/10 years if you can't afford to move? Or is it a situation where you would not be able to rent anywhere larger?

Only you can make the decision, I can only give my experience after the financial crash of 2008 where we were priced out due to high prices, we were able to buy when the prices dipped and since then they have sky rocketed with a slow decline at the moment. I actually thought prices would continue to fall in the early 2010s, instead they have risen sharply but we needed somewhere to live, could afford it and were planning to stay for years. The house went up by 60%, we couldn't afford it now. This isn't a good thing, high house prices are bad for everyone apart from the super rich who can own them as additional assets without having to live in them. It would be much better if they stabilised. We need more social housing, without Right to Buy decimating the available housing stock as relying on the private rental sector is not working for anyone, and buying is seen as the only way to have stability and is unaffordable for many.

This is interesting, unfortunately I think he may be right, they might rise when interest rates are cut

" ... some people unfortunately do have the mentality where they WANT people with mortgages to suffer because in their mind we are “debt junkies” or whatever other derogatory term they choose to use. They wanted interest rates to go sky high, people to be unable to pay their mortgages & for the property market to crash."

Why do we tolerate this poster then? As far as I can see it's just one person who treats the Property board like their own private group chat - the misery that likes company. Having apparently been banned from another forum, I know they keep their posts well within MN rules but other frequent Property posters seem to engage with them, feeding their agenda. Or do we just humour this person like the belligerent relative you only see at funerals?

Well as you say they keep their posts within Mumsnet rules so as long as people do that, they are entitled to express their opinions despite regulars being able to predict what they will say to any post and it’s nearly always negative.

@GoingDownLikeBHS I'm not sure if I would want them banned just because I don't agree.

It's a nasty attitude to wish suffering on others just because you haven't managed to get on the property ladder but some people struggle with bitterness 🤷🏻‍♀️

Also some of the links and some info they've posted is helpful and people are allowed to disagree

@Jellybean85 and @Twiglets1 - I think it's helpful to know others have got his number too. And it's not disagreement I'm concerned by at all - its the obvious gloating.

They may rise IF rates are cut (big IF IMO) but as the job losses seem to be mounting who is realistically going to borrow money to buy at these insane prices?

https://www.ft.com/content/8fee7052-3da3-4cfb-9467-0072d08214f9

Where does @Chinhairsoftheworldunite say they work for Citibank?

The "rising rents" narrative can also change quickly, I fear we are heading for some sort of stagflation situation in the UK, that will be REALLY bad for debt holders.

https://propertyindustryeye.com/rental-prices-fall-in-all-regions-across-the-uk-with-the-exception-of-one/

Our fix ran out 31st Dec. Big panics in Summer at high interest rates and worry they would still rise. We got offers for 2 year fixes in advance
5.84% in July
5.41% in Oct
5.24% in Dec
Due to slow solicitors we didn't complete and have been on SVR in Jan. Seems to have worked to our advantage in the end, despite the worry.
Now fixing at 4.81%

Glad for you. It’s always good to hear things working out after so much worry. Hopefully others will soon be joining you on the path to more sustainable rates.

Not directly related but a big warning to all. FD just increased their credit card rates by 6%! That's nice for their customers struggling to pay off their CC balances. They were fairly low to begin with so they are only rising to around 23%, but please beware if it pertains to you.

So any savings you make on the mortgage rate during the bank`s desperate debt sale would be eaten up by the credit card hike if you had both mortgage and credit card debt? Very sneaky move, but exactly what you would expect in this climate, they basically have you trapped if you owe debt to them.

I just checked and saw that my Bank's mortgage rate is now lower than it was this time last year (when I last remortaged). Maybe the rate hike panic was premature, but we wait and see what 2024 brings

The chatter on financial media seems to be moving away from the idea of loads of rate cuts early next year, back to the idea of higher for longer, ECB seemed quite dismissive of the idea that rates need to be cut soon when making their statement today for example, and some commentators saying that if a burst of inflation were to hit the U.S the FED would really crank rates up hard this time to snuff it out, that would be an interesting pickle for the BOE!

The chatter I've seen seems to be largely expecting rate cuts beginning in May or June & still expecting 3 or 4 small cuts throughout 2024

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67993276

So the SIX rates cuts you were celebrating a few days ago are off the table now?

I saw on the news that Santander cut the rates further. Went on the website to check (curious creature meself) and on 60% LTV they have 3.89% 5 year fix available with £999 fee. Might be of interest for those coming off the fix soon.

Yep, those with big mortgage debts need to fix, and soon.

Lol, all I did was report in a previous post an article saying that investors bet on six rate cuts in 2024 @CrashyTime

Then I read a more recent article from a reputable source suggesting 3 or 4 cuts this year so I posted that.

I wasn't celebrating the possibility of 6 rate cuts, and it's not "off the table" now anyway because no one knows for sure how many rate cuts there will be. Some people are predicting 2 rate cuts, some 6, some NONE (oh, that's you) - everyone's guessing.

hmm your advice wasn't spot on last year was it, when you were telling people to fix for 10 years while mortgage rates were at their highest?

Don't give up the day job, Crashy!

The best rates are for people with really big deposits (so they take the hit in a crash instead of the bank) the average person with big mortgage debt is better to just fix and start paying down instead of trying to be a bond market genius. The "experts" you so often quote in many cases work for the banks and are just doing a sales job to encourage people to take part in the "debt sale" (they are panicked because demand for debt has fallen off a cliff, LOL)

Naturally the best rates are for people with big deposits who represent zero risk to the lender.

Whatever your LTV though, it's never a good idea to tie yourself into a long fix when rates are peaking.

You dont know that rates are peaking though, that is the point, people who piled in during the stamp duty holiday thought rates had peaked! How fucked are most of them now? At least get a five year fix and accept that you have debt to pay back instead of thinking that you can game the market somehow by waiting for rates to be cut again (first time was to save the banks, they dont need to save the banks this time, so far anyway)