How far would you go to help your child get on in the world?
Many Neath parents move area to ensure their child gets into
the best primary school or fund their university costs. Many of you reading
this have even helped your children with the deposit for their first home from
savings.
However, I have come across many Neath people in their 50’s
and 60’s, who have good jobs and incomes, yet don’t have the savings to give to
their children to help them buy their first home. It doesn’t help when you
consider …
The average value of a Neath home has risen by 24.4% in the last 5 years, from £121,141 to £150,721.
I am therefore seeing increasing numbers of parents who are
willing to re-mortgage their own Neath home or start a new mortgage (when they
own their home outright) — to get their children onto the Neath property
ladder.
So, whilst the Government is trying to turn Britain’s 20 and 30 somethings from ‘Generation Rent’ into ‘Generation Buy’, the Bank of Mum and Dad are mortgaging their retirement to pay for it all. Yet it need not be cost-prohibitive borrowing the deposit as you still have access to interest-only mortgages.
With an interest-only mortgage, your monthly mortgage payment covers only the interest on your mortgage, not any of the original capital borrowed. This means your mortgage payments will be lower than on a repayment mortgage, remembering though at the end of the term you will still owe the original amount you borrowed from the mortgage provider.
1 in 14 new mortgages are interest only and 1 in 5.5 existing mortgages are interest-only mortgages, they are very popular.
Anyway, many Neath homeowners might be worried about having
that level of debt in their golden years. However, many plan to pay off the mortgage
when they downsize as they get into their 60’s and 70’s.
I talk to many Neath homeowners, who are asset rich but cash
poor and desire to help their children onto the Neath property ladder. Their
attitude is their children will inherit their property when they pass away, so
it seems practical to give them that money to work harder for them earlier in
their life when they need it to buy their first home.
Can
you get a mortgage, even if you are retired?
A lot is dependent upon your age and financial position. The
mortgage companies will see if you have adequate funds for your retirement and emergencies
plus leaving enough equity in the property to enable you to downsize in the
future. Like all things, you need to take advice from a qualified mortgage
arranger.
So, that then begs the question, is there enough equity in Neath
homes to borrow against?
In the late 1980s and again in the early 2000s, many Brits saw
their homes as a cash machine. Numerous homeowners re-mortgaging at the end of
their mortgage’s preliminary term (usually after the initial 2, 3 or 5 years),
but when doing so increased their mortgage to enable them to buy a nice car or
fancy holiday. Yet, by increasing the borrowing, it created negative equity in
the early 1990s and stopped many homeowners moving home between 2009 and 2013
because of their lack of equity.
Therefore, I have to ask, have we borrowed too much this time
round?
Looking at Neath and the specific postcodes SA10 and SA11 combined
…
In 2016, the average Neath homeowner had a mortgage of £60,242 and today it is £58,443, a drop of £1,799.
I also considered the equity Neath people have amassed over the
same 5 years.
In
2016, the average equity held in a Neath homeowners’ property (whilst still
having a mortgage) was £60,899, yet today that stands at £92,278, a rise of £31,379.
Even though mortgages have increased, Neath homeowner’s equity has
risen even more, meaning as we stand today, mortgaged and owned-outright
properties, there is …
£3,781,592,204
of equity held in all Neath homes.
Whilst the total value of mortgages has increased
slightly since 2016, as a percentage, this has gone down meaning Neath
homeowners and Neath landlords have increased their equity in the last five
years.
It can quite clearly be seen that the financial insecurity sparked by the Credit Crunch
crisis of 2008/9 has created a generation of Neath homeowners and landlords who
are savers and improvers rather than movers and excessive borrowers, using
excess cash to invest in their property and pay down debt or to excessively
borrow on their equity growth.
Only 14.46% of the total value of Neath property is borrowed money with a mortgage.
This is great news for every Neath homeowner and landlord
because irrespective of whether the ‘Post Lockdown Bounce’ is short or long-lived,
it shows the Neath property market is in a better state to ride out any storm
that it might encounter than ever before because less people will be in
negative equity or have prohibitively high mortgages.
Before I finish, I fully appreciate money and inheritance is a sensitive subject
for many families.
My message to all the Neath parents
is, just because your children aren’t talking about the subject, it doesn’t
mean it’s not on their mind.
The lead has to come from
you, as a Neath parent, to ensure the wealth held in your bricks and mortar can
be used to your family’s advantage, when they need it most.
If you do, your children will
thank you for it and they may even do exactly the same for their children, then,
they will do the same for their children’s children … creating a legacy that
will go on for generations.
