When I was asked to write about Mortgages I wondered what interesting and fun things I could find out about how we buy are homes. As I suspected, there aren’t any. There is every little fun to be had but you can unearth some vaguely interesting things about Mortgages. For example, did you know that the word mortgage translates literally from the ancient French as “dead pledge”? It basically meant that the loan would last till you bought the home or you died. Another fact, before it was changed in medieval times, the law was that when you got a mortgage on your home you owned everything below it all the way down to the Earth’s core. You also owned everything above it too at least up to the clouds. Beyond that was heaven and that belonged to God. A good Solicitor (which you will need) for your legal needs is not concerned with this and some decent Conveyancing Quotes from https://www.samconveyancing.co.uk/conveyancing-quote will help you along. What other interesting things are there about Mortgages.
A mortgage can last for 25 to 30 years. It’s probably the most amount of money that you will ever borrow in your life and it takes a long time to pay it off. How then would you celebrate when the mortgage is finally finished? In Scotland they would paint the front door a bright red meaning that the neighbours would be in no doubt that that household was mortgage free. In the United States they favour a winged eagle plaque or a very ceremonial burning of the final mortgage demand.
Mortgages and buying ones on home is really quite a modern phenomena. It is only about a hundred years since the majority of people in society where able to buy a house. Prior to this most of the country rented their home and houses were owned pretty much exclusively by the owners of the factories where they worked. The way that the housing market is going this looks like it could well be the case again. However since the 1960’s onwards the opportunities for home ownership via a mortgage have increased ten fold mainly via the use of building societies although now banks seem to have taken over for the most part.
One of the reasons is the ever changing mortgage rates. These are linked to the Bank of England base rate. At one point in the eighties it reached the heights of fifteen percent. Here’s a fun fact, when you get assessed for a mortgage the algorithms take into account if you can afford it should it happen again.