It’s a pretty scary time in the property market these days. Those 95% and 100% mortgages and loans of ridiculous multiples of annual salary that seemed like such a good idea at the time are coming back to bite many where it hurts. And while we fret and worry the majority of the rest of the world, where by and large renting is the norm wonders why we put ourselves through it.
It is an odd thing this dash for property ownership, which when you think about it, is not property ownership until you pay that last payment of your mortgage, somewhere far far into the future and as many are now discovering there is many a slip….

And when did our houses become investments instead of homes? I think that the whole approach to property ownership is askew. A house should be a home, somewhere we choose because we want to live there and we think it will be a safe and comfortable place for our families, not a good investment in an up coming area, or the next town ripe for development. Chosen for the right reasons property can be a joy to own not a constant worry that has you checking out the for sale signs in your street
and never being able to pass a local Estate agents window.

Settled in you own little nest, property prices can rise and fall all they like, because unless you want to sell to move to another country in which property is cheap and the way of life is entirely different it doesn’t matter. And even if you have to move for work, or any other reason if your property has gone down in value then the one you want to buy will have suffered a corresponding drop.

The era of cheap lending is over they tell us and I think the era of blindly trusting financial institutions to tie us into the most costly deal most of us will ever make should be over too. Who ever thought that lending or borrowing such vast amounts of money that even the slightest adjustment in interest rates would spell disaster would be a good idea?

The misery of negative equity and its likely progression to repossession is one of the most horrible and devastating things that could happen to a family. We’ve been greedy, we’ve gambled and lost, we’ve been short sighted. Whatever your view point and whatever the future has in store for us, perhaps it is time to appreciate our bricks and mortar for more than it’s investment value and return to a time when, in the words of the old song ‘Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home’