About 17 years sooner than expected...

Indeed. And when I first bought a house 10 years before that, you got
tax relief on your mortgage interest payments - which made it somewhat
of a no-brainer.

 

I've probably misquoted it slightly, but it was famously said by the
old-school tory Alan Clarke (who lived in a castle, FFS) of the
self-made millionaire Heseltine.

 

OK, so by buying you lost 20k on your current place and by waiting
you're going to save 50-75k on the next place.

By selling the old place, stashing the cash and renting, you could have
lost nothing on the current place (assuming rental prices being similar
to interest-only mortgage rates), pocketed the interest, and still
saved 50-75k on the new place.

Of course, hindsight is everything. I had to wait a few years longer
than I thought I would for things to crumble, but it can't have come as
a surprise to anyone.

 

a tad more than £300k for us...

none of this negative equity stuff for me either, mind.

 

Yeah, I saw the quote when I googled.
--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (b.rogers at ifrance.com)
\`\ | /`/
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2, IBB#10
`\|/`
`

 

Well, I don't see it as lost 20k. I would have spent 10 of that no
matter what as it was new kitchen, bathroom, re-decorate and some work
in the garden.

Rental near me costs the same as capital repayment mortgage, which is
what I've got.

To be honest, my planning was done around a slowing of the market
rather than a downturn and the prices of what I'll be moving into
holding their original value.

And as my mortgage is about 65% of property value, and less than 3x
salary, I'm not too worried.

 

Last week, looking through a book, I found an article I'd kept from
2002 in The Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2002/jun/02/houseprices.observercashsection

 

Apparently it has for many. Everyone told us we were mad to sell the
house when we moved to Belgium as we would "never get back on the
ladder" and that was only in June.

My view was that it could only go one way and by a long way.

 

OK sorry I shall STFU

 

I think we're in a relatively good position as I've said up there ^,
i.e. good job security, above inflation payrises, etc - my pay has
gone up by over £6k since we took out the mortgage, and we had a large
(>15%) deposit too. Hopefully we'll get a good rate from someone when
our fixed rate runs out next june...

 

Clark, without an 'e'

HTH