Mortgage income multiples and affordability

One of the ways people are finding to pay more for houses is to switch from the historical use of income multiples to the new measure of ‘affordability’. The former gives the wrong answer, but the latter is great. Progress is good, but it’s worth understanding. When I bought my first house in 1989 mortgage providers would qualify a prospective mortgagee by asking how much did they want to borrow as a proportion of their gross salary[ref]The rationale for gross salary was Mortgage Interest Relief At Source(MIRAS) allowed you to pay the interest from pre-tax salary. Barmy, I know, though notably the United States still has mortgage interest on residential property as tax-deductible I believe[/ref]. You’d typically get a mortgage of 3.5 times a single salary or 2.5 times joint salaries in the case of a couple.

These sound low today. To the extent of being unworkable at current house prices for most people. It made sense 30 years ago, because Britain had just come off a run of double digit interest rates, personal taxation was much higher (the personal allowance nowadays is over a third of the median salary of £26,000, it was lower relative to salaries in the past). It is instructive to observe the relative proportions of mortgage interest and capital repayments over the typical 25 year period at 10% interest rates and the current ~2% rates.

You spend much more time repaying capital at 2% APR

Compared to, say, my mortgage career at higher interest rates

you paid a higher absolute amount relative to the price of the house, and you pay interest for longer in 1980s/1990s

Which is much more like the canonical sudden rush of repayment towards the end that we used to know and love. When you tot up the total amount repaid, the 2% fellow pays 3*gross or 4* net salary, the 10% guy pays 7*gross or 9* net salary[ref]I have assumed the 3.5 times multiple applies to net salary since you don’t get MIRAS any more[/ref]

There’s clearly some case to be made for increasing the income multiple – provided that interest rates stay the same. After all, if we say I was paying the long-run British average of about 6% interest rates over my working life, then had I been earning the average wage, I’d have sunk 6*net/5* gross wages into my house[ref]I earned more than the median wage for nearly a lot of my working life, so this isn’t that bad. However, I am looking for the scale factor, the old mortgage income multiples were workable, many people have paid off their mortgages from then[/ref]. If it’s all different now, and low interest rates are here to stay, then it’s perfectly justified to sink twice as much into a house. In the end it’s what you pay over your working life that matters, and at lower interest rates the total amount paid is less.

So bring it on, let’s run at twice the income multiples that were lent to people 25 years ago. That’s 7* single income and 5* double incomes. Now 7* median single income will buy you my house I believe, so the residual 10% gives you room to may the parasitic costs of moving and all the hangers-on.

This isn’t recommendation or otherwise. Housing still rates as the greatest finance screw-up of my life, so what do I know 😉

Thing is, it’s all different now are the most dangerous words in finance. Secular changes takes years to take effect. QE can’t last for ever. If you’re looking to buy a house as a first time buyer, you may not like Buy-to-Letters who are essentially front-running your heart’s desire. But say what you like about them, they’ve probably got a fair awareness of the mortgage market.It’s the oldest law of the jungle – when the big beasts start looking nervous it’s worth knowing why…

Some of the BTL guys are running scared and fixing

And it appears some of them are running scared and remortgaging now. Had I bought just three years later, the Ermine would probably be a buy-to-letter with a deep belief in the value of housing rather than still feeling it was a Weapon of Mass Wealth destruction – one’s early experiences with an asset class tend to be formative. However, I have recently seen younger BTLers come a cropper with the usual problems, underestimating the effect of voids, and underestimating the chavviness and lack of character of some tenants. As a tenant years ago I only saw the lack of character of landlords, but it seems to cut all ways. The residential housing market seems to bring out a particularly nasty streak in the British psyche – buying and selling houses is pretty horrible experience too. BTL landlords seem to need significant capital resources, and preferably a number of BTL properties to average these lumpy setbacks.

It probably is a bit different now…

But not as much as to justify a doubling of price to earnings. 4 or 5 time single, maybe. The double salary premium might go up a little bit more – mothers return to work quicker now than they used to. Let us postulate that it’s all different now. Mortgages are given on an income multiple of 7 times single salary, but it is required that you have a 10% deposit (ie 90% of the purchase price is advanced to you). Sounds fair enough?

Let’s take a look at what your monthly repayments would be like, assuming you’re on a standard variable rate, ranging from the 1% it’s around now to the 14-16% at the high-water mark of what I saw in my mortgage career.

your mortgage payments as a function of annual interest rates

at 15% you’re paying out more than 90% of your net pay in mortgage. Nothing left to pay bills, council tax and you had better become a breatharian or start scavenging food from bins like Top Cat. Note that you don’t have to see sustained rates like this for several years. Just a couple of years of that can slaughter you unless you have significant savings behind you. It all boils down to the usual question.

I’ve been there – well less than that, but I’ve spent more than half my net pay on the mortgage.

If you’re going to start down that track then at least know what the enemy looks like. This has nothing to do with negative equity, it’s straight interest rates. You need to either have savings, live more frugally, or get a payment holiday. Those savings need to be about two years of running costs. Then it’s a fair gamble, because after two years of 15% interest rates Britain will look very different. The general misery would be such that some government would probably have to do whatever it takes to reduce them, or start dropping money from helicopters[ref]Milton Friedman, 1969 The Optimum Quantity of Money And Other Essays[/ref].

an old idea from 1969

Your aim as that homeowner is to be still standing when all the people around you have been repossessed.

It can be done. But it’s rough being the house between two evicted properties. You do start to wonder when it’ll be your turn. It’s no fun at all…

Frugality is the solution there; by definition. If you were earning more then your earnings multiple would be lower. It’s not something that sits easily with expectations now. And God help you if you have any other debt.

Income multiples will matter again if interest rates rise to historical norms of ~6%. Mr putative 7 times net  income multiple will be paying ~50% of his income on the mortgage.

Methodology

This spreadsheet. I calibrated it against this calculator and derived the formula from Francis Webb’s Mortgage interest calculator template. [ref]I regret to say that I didn’t bother trying to understand the function, simply copied it and tested it against Monevator’s calculator. It was too nice a day to wrangle that sort of detail, so as long as there isn’t s systematic error across both sources it should be right :)[/ref]

I’m done with property now. Even after 25 years the thought of residential property as an asset class brings me out in hives 😉 Good luck all and be careful out there.