Can you believe it? My own sister uttering the dreaded words: “I am just throwing money away by renting.” Ouch! That’s up there with “renting is dead money”. She might as well have added, “You Only Live Once!” and then spent her ISA savings on a YOLO tattoo. Before we begin: I’ve learned that it’s impossible to write about UK property without provoking an outburst of emotion – from every faction – so a quick nod to the laundry list: Yes, people want to own homes for different reasons. Yes, at the end of 25 years of renting, you’re still renting. Yes, houses look cheap / expensive, dependin ..read more

What caught my eye this week. Will house prices fall, steady, or crash? I’d say a decline was the consensus view as we closed the door on 2022, with memories of Liz Truss still swirling about the porch like a frightful CGI spirit. Yet having competent technocrats back in Downing Street after a multi-year hiatus has had such a calming effect on markets that the prospect of a proper slump seems to me to be abating fast. PM Sunak and chancellor Hunt still can’t offer much in the way of growth. And that’s a problem in the long-term. But even the slow puncture Brexit economy doesn’t seem quite so ..read more

For sure I’m not the only homeowner who has been refreshing their mortgage options every day for the past few months. But are you also following swap rates? Swap rates might sound like the relative popularity of Lionel Messi versus Cristiano Ronaldo in the Panini sticker trading game. But they’re actually a vital bit of the financial system plumbing. Swap rates largely determine mortgage rates, as well as much else that’s numerical and curvy in the financial world. By keeping an eye on swap rates, you can better understand why you’re offered a particular mortgage rate. True, you probably won ..read more

Do you have a mortgage? Do you know what your loan-to-value ratio is – and what interest rate band that puts you into with your bank? Oh, I see… You have other hobbies. Look, I appreciate there’s nothing more boring than a mortgage deal. Especially when half of you already know what I’m talking about, and will nod off in about 150 words’ time. But if you don’t, please keep reading. You might save yourself a lot of money. Just ask Richard, a first-time buyer. Richard was stretching to buy his first flat. And because I’m the sort of person who has blogged about money for 17 years, I asked him w ..read more

Everyone says our homes cost too much to buy. But few look deeply into historical UK house prices for context. Yet if you were to go back through the ages with a time-traveling estate agent in a TARDIS (period features, surprisingly roomy, in the same family for 900 years) you’d find it’s been a long while since British homes were cheap. Even when property looked more affordable – the 1970s, say, or briefly in the 1990s – there were other things going on. High unemployment, punishing interest rates, recession, or a more restricted market for mortgages. With that said, the housing market did s ..read more

This article looks at property vs shares from the perspective of the typical man or woman in the (overpriced) street. It does not argue buying a house right now is better than buying shares – or vice versa. But rather: why do people tend to feel they’ve done well buying their own property? Compared to their poor attempts at share investing? Trying to weigh up the merits of property vs shares is a right of passage for anyone who gets into investing. Most of us have limits on our capital and income. Even more so in our late 20s and 30s when – traditionally – buying your first home was a right o ..read more

Franz Kafka’s classic The Metamorphosis sees the central character go to bed a man and wake up as a giant cockroach. Does your mortgage risk a similar transformation in 2022? Could this engine of wealth creation become a millstone? It sounds heretical. For more a decade it’s been almost daft not to run a cheap mortgage. Barely there interest rates made for affordable repayments. Ever-higher house prices and stock markets meant owning additional assets was more rewarding than repaying your debt. But now rates are rising. Stock markets have crashed, and house price growth is slowing. Recession ..read more

People get muddled when they think about their own home in financial terms. This extends to a repayment mortgage used to buy a property. Mental accounting – also known as ‘bucketing’ – is what causes this discombobulation. Fact is we tend to think about the value of money differently, depending on where it comes from and where it ends up. Mental accounting involves putting money into different mental accounts – or buckets – as a crutch in our financial thinking. Bucket or bouquet? For example, a 40-something friend tells you they have “no savings”. Worried, you make plans to run the London Ma ..read more

This article on choosing the best mortgage rate is by The Dink from Team Monevator. Check back every Monday for more fresh perspectives on personal finance and investing from the Team. The email from my bank practically begged me to pay attention: “Dear Mr Dink, it’s almost time to switch to a new mortgage rate.” I’ve only renewed my mortgage once before. That time it dropped my monthly repayments by £70. So I’m excited by the prospect of more of the same. Renewing a mortgage was not always pleasant. Speak to anyone who had a mortgage in the 1970s and they’ll tell you that. The 17% minimum le ..read more

You’re too late to get into buy-to-let. It had a good run, but the party’s over. I graduated from university in the early 1990s. I got a job in The City, moved down to London, and shared a rented house with a few friends. After a year of renting – and spurred on by a combination of parental pressure, MIRAS1, and (ludicrously) a mortgage interest subsidy from my employer – I bought a house. Did I have a big inheritance? No. I saved up for the deposit in my first year of work. Okay, that’s not actually quite true. I also had some profits from punting my student loan on the stock market, the pro ..read more