The "Mortgage-free in 2025-30" club!

pinkteapot

amycool - that's just like us. We were mortgage-neutral in our old house and then upsized to a long-term (we hope) house.

We also had chain-related mortgage pressure. We'd planned to go with HSBC but discovered at the 11th hour that they don't lend to contractors (my job wasn't permanent at the time). Scrambled to get a broker on the case and had to go with Santander who were 0.5% more for the same product (lifetime tracker).

Naturally, just before we exchanged, my job was made permanent but it was too late to change the mortgage at that point. Six months after we moved in, we switched to HSBC (you can't borrow on a property you've owned less than six months, so we had to wait that long). The whole episode meant we wasted about £1,000 on the Santander application and broker fee, compared to if HSBC had taken us from the start. :mad:

Good luck with the adoption. I know two people who have adopted and the only way I can describe it is as an amazing rollercoaster!

sweaty_betty

pinkteapot wrote: »

That's interesting - which lender is it and did you specifically get an offset mortgage? I've not heard of OPs being available to get back unless it's an actual offset mortgage. Nice to know it's an option, even if you hope you never need it!

I know, I was surprised too! (Although I'm going to double check this before I put in huge amounts...). It's the cooperative bank.

sweaty_betty

Can someone tell me what mortgage neutral means please?

choccielover

That you have the same amount in savings as your mortgage balance I think

amycool

pinkteapot wrote: »

amycool - that's just like us. We were mortgage-neutral in our old house and then upsized to a long-term (we hope) house.

We also had chain-related mortgage pressure. We'd planned to go with HSBC but discovered at the 11th hour that they don't lend to contractors (my job wasn't permanent at the time). Scrambled to get a broker on the case and had to go with Santander who were 0.5% more for the same product (lifetime tracker).

Naturally, just before we exchanged, my job was made permanent but it was too late to change the mortgage at that point. Six months after we moved in, we switched to HSBC (you can't borrow on a property you've owned less than six months, so we had to wait that long). The whole episode meant we wasted about £1,000 on the Santander application and broker fee, compared to if HSBC had taken us from the start. :mad:

Good luck with the adoption. I know two people who have adopted and the only way I can describe it is as an amazing rollercoaster!

How frustrating! We had paid for the survey on the first property but thankfully they didn't make us pay again for the second. Not that it was worth the paper it was written on! No mention of the huge damp patch that has so far cost almost £2000 to fix!!

Our adoption application has been quite smooth so far (just my GP and boss at work that have caused trouble) but we're still early days. Luckily, we have a lovely social worker.

amycool

sweaty_betty wrote: »

Can someone tell me what mortgage neutral means please?

What choccielover said.

I have a line graph on my spreadsheet showing debt versus savings and it's nice to see them getting closer. Quite a long way apart at the moment though!

pinkteapot

amycool wrote: »

What choccielover said.

I have a line graph on my spreadsheet showing debt versus savings and it's nice to see them getting closer. Quite a long way apart at the moment though!

I have the same graph on my spreadsheet!

We were mortgage neutral for a while at the old house. Now we're £180k away from it. :eek:

lippy1923

LOL. To be mortgage neutral I would need £117k in savings :rotfl:

sweaty_betty

I can't imagine being mortgage neutral!
But I'm going to put a spreadsheet together to motivate myself

pinkteapot

sweaty_betty wrote: »

I can't imagine being mortgage neutral!
But I'm going to put a spreadsheet together to motivate myself

I miss being mortgage-neutral. It was amazing knowing that we could just phone up and pay the mortgage off whenever we wanted.

I should try and work out when we'll be mortgage-neutral again. It'll be at some point before our MF goal date of 2028, as we do keep a savings buffer (it's not all gone on OPs). That'll be a good interim celebration.