It must have been so simple when he was a nipper. You buy a house with a mortgage, and you got to pay back a shedload of interest and a teensy bit of the capital. 25 long years later and this happens
as the dynamic balance between interest and capital repaid shifts in your favour. The downside, of course, is that you have to pay off the capital. You pay roughly twice as much1 for your house if you buy it with a mortgage than with cash, due to paying interest for 25 years. Which is why some bright spark dreamed up the interest-only mortage.
Although we now think of them as ways to enable the BTL brigade to shaft everyone younger than themselves, the IO mortgage was originally dreamed up to make houses more affordable by halving the mortgage payments. Easy peasy. What actually happened for a while was house prices went up2, because every time you make the existing price more affordable the price adjusts so it becomes only-just-about-affordable, because that’s where premium scarce goods reach equilibrium in a market economy. It’s only the punters that can’t afford the prices and fall out of the market that puts a brake on house prices, but UK governments have never acted on this because most voters want high house prices. Governments will change that when the increasing age people buy their first property means there are as many non homeowners as there are homeowners of voting age.
Enter stage left, an accountant, age 77, mithering about his IO mortgage being called in
who didn’t realise you had a pay off an interest-only mortgage in this lifetime, rather than the next. Len, this post is for you. There’s pathos in this story on so many levels, I mean, FFS, this dude worked as an accountant for a living. It’s fair enough for the interest-only mortgage to catch out young whippersnappers like Joe and Josephine in the hands of Mr big Bad Wolf, but grizzled greybeards of 77 who have only just wised up to the fact that they have aught to pay off the capital have no excuse. These guys had the temerity to complain to the Financial Ombudsman and then when they got the finger from the FOS because of the pickle they got themselves into through overspending in retirement, bleat to their local MP. The MP spins this as a tale of dreadful ageism by Santander. No, they’d just like to get their fricking money back before you die. I’ve done this story too many times before, WTF is it with the British and housing?
I know it’s impolite to mention the Grim reaper but it’s a fact that every 24 hours you live you get a day closer to death. I am nearly three decades closer to death than when I took out that mortgage, which is why I paid the bugger down, and that’s even without the benefit of a life of accounting to see the problem rushing up to meet me. The MP puts this spin on it
Lloyd called on Santander to either increase its age limit for mortgage borrowers or abolish it, and said: “Without such a move, Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald will lose their home. Is that really what the bank wants to see happen? I will also be raising this vital issue in parliament. I am sure there are tens of thousands of other families potentially facing the same, desperate situation in the coming years, which is unacceptable.”
No. It’s a situation that has been developing over decades, and they can’t say they weren’t warned. The Fitzgeralds chose to stick their heads firmly in the sand, and that’s why they are in the shit. It also shows the folly of another innovation in mortgage finance, the short-term fix. These guys remortgaged in 2007 for 8 years. It’s fair enough, when the 8 years are up, you need to ask again if you can stay in that house if you don’t have the money to redeem it.
You have the option to borrow from someone else I guess, but nearing 80 you just aren’t a good prospect, because you have zero human capital left. If you financial capital isn’t enough to keep you in your house, then you don’t get to stay in that house, and you can’t earn any more financial capital. You are stuffed. The moral of the story is pay your bloody mortgage off in your early retirement, or be prepared to move or rent.
This is not a sob story of somebody who was taken out by events beyond their control. This was wilful overspending on a big scale for decades. I could have had many fine holidays with the money I used to pay down my mortgage. The fact this guy plied his trade as an accountant takes the biscuit. Continue reading “Retired accountant fails to understand interest only mortgage, loses house”
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