Sandra Chapman: Tough times ahead for those with a mortgage

I didn’t know anything about mortgages then, being used to renting any accommodation I was staying in once I left the family home. Rents were expensive and as a very junior reporter in those days I wasn’t earning much so my accommodation was spartan.

So when the boyfriend talked about marriage I wondered how we could afford the rent for a bigger flat, must less a house. And that was when I first became acquainted with the word mortgage.

He explained patiently how the money is loaned by a building society and you pay it back as a mortgage over the next 25 years. I went through the ‘you cannot be serious’ stuff, incredulous that two on-the-breadline young journalists could even be considered for such a loan. But he was way ahead of me, obviously had been talking to his parents and the required deposit appeared like magic.

I was still at the nail-biting stage of wondering how we could pay what the house was going to cost us each month, never mind the deposit which it turned out was a gift. Bless my late in-laws.

If it were not for them, renting would have been our only option. The building society, the name of which I cannot remember, happily loaned the mortgage money and congratulated us on our forthcoming nuptials. To say I was in a daze is a great understatement. It took me ages to accept the fact we had all this debt ahead of us, depending on always being employed to pay it back.

Fifty three years of marriage later and now in our fifth house, we are mortgage free. But the current generation of young couples hoping to buy a house, or who may already be into their first mortgage, are in a different situation altogether. Those with a mortgage face a large hike in those monthly payments and those still going through the process of arranging a mortgage might not be able to get it after all given the financial problems facing the UK.

Some experts believe that any crisis in sterling now could threaten global stability.

This all came about when our new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced his decision to scrap the top rate of income tax and cut the basic rate of income tax from 20 per cent to 19 per cent, a stamp duty reduction and the reversal of increases to national insurance and corporation tax, all of which have sent economists into a tizzy believing this would ‘destabilise Britain’s public finances’.

The Chancellor says he is sticking to his plan. The Labour Party are acting as though the Conservatives are mad and bad and they could do a much better job.

Scraps and squabbles such as these were practically non-existent back in 1969. It was an age when new, young home owners were always on the eye out for a larger property. Job changes meant moving on and the onset of children required an even bigger house. On the rare occasion when I pass that first home we had I still admire it but wonder how I could ever live in something so small now. Subsequent housing there has filled in the green fields that were all around, there are shops where there was none before and endless traffic, so, yes it has all the sounds of a busy small town.

Three years later we moved into more rural territory. I didn’t know then we would move three more times.

People of my generation have long since paid off the mortgage so we can sit back and not be too worried about what the Chancellor is planning fiscally.

But how different it is for the current generation trying to get on the property ladder with all the political fighting going on with the International Monetary Fund (a very important body) telling our Prime Minister to make changes to her policy as it, along with other plans risks undermining the Bank of England’s efforts to curb inflation.

This political scrap is not ideal for those trying to get on the property ladder.