Are you hit by evaporating equity? Poll discussion

johncolescarr

I bought a house with my girlfriend in 2007 on 100% mortgage, I thought a perfectly reasonable investment at the time, house has fallen £10K in value since then, (£138k to 128Kest) and I have paid off about 2K capital, so I have -6% equity. However, since then my girlfriend and I have both had pay rises, so feverently saving any spare cash so the overall figure at re-mortgage looks healthier (plus we are quite young 26-27). We must all just whether the storm.

kopicbloodaxe

When I said I was the greater fool, I was referring to this recent blog of Martin's

Coveredinbees!!!!

Ahhhh having now read the blog I see what you mean

McSaver

My Current Status is: H - I do not have a mortgage.

When I buy my first home I will have a mortgage of £0.

bitemebankers

We moved four and a half years ago and took out a 90% mortgage for our current property. It's hard to tell whether we're actually in negative equity or not because there's so little property changing hands at present. Am I worried though? Certainly not. We have no desire to move and given the interest rate cuts, we're already about £100 a month better off than we were this time last year.

JayZed

LTV of 63% when we bought 18 months ago. Probably now about 65%, i.e. not much change, as we've been diligently overpaying the maximum we're allowed to every month.

Unfortunately we probably won't be able to do that in the new year, as my wife's freelance work has more or less dried up, but I still expect our LTV to be below 70% by the time we come to remortgage next summer.

Mozette

B, unless they really plummet. I was lucky I bought what I did, where I did, when I did, and when I bought my current home nearly 5 years ago, it shouldn't now be too far below what I paid for it, but I'd built up a nice lot of equity to put down on it, so have a relatively small mortgage.

To be honest though, I'm not fussed really what my home is 'worth', it's keeping me warm & dry, and I can afford it; that's what matters.

Thank God I'm old!

suzithefloozy

We sold our first house and bought our second when house prices were at their highest last summer and we took an 85% LTV mortgage on the new house at that point.

Hubby said at the time he reckoned house prices were gonna fall so why not just sell the old house and go into rented for a bit. I didn't like this idea as if they continued to rise we'd need an even higher LTV to buy the same sort of house, and having been lucky enough to get onto the property ladder in the first place, I didn't want to get off it.

Of course I am now eating those badly chosen words as the fall in prices means we now have approximately 90-100% LTV on our mortgage

However, we have saved up, just done an extension and are doing loads of renovations so after all that's done we should hopefully be in a better position. Even if we're not I'm not too worried...we love the house, can afford the mortgage repayments (we are fixed for another 4 years) and are not planning on moving for the next 10-20 years anyway :cool:

cheekymonkey20

Unfortunatly I am in negative.... brought in june 07 at £145k and the apartment has dropped to £120k when we had it valued a few weeks ago, have a mortgage of £137100, so at 114.25% negative equity... remortgaging in July 2010 so I am hoping there are a few rates out there for those in negative equity so we dont have to deal with the standard variable rate

buxtonrabbitgreen

I feel really sorry for anyone who has bought in the last couple of years. I am not the GF but only because I bought the house nearly 20 years ago and have never been one of the "must climb the ladder brigade" 2 of my kids are in neg equity now. It wasn't so bad when I bought my house one tended to have a mortgage that was fixed for the life of it. But with all these 2-3 year deals a lot of people will be in trouble when they run out.