Sunday 19 June 2011

The Mortgage Scam

I thought on the Mortgage scam - In the UK when we have a mortgage we have the notion that the house belongs to us. But note: the bank holds the deeds ‘till all mortgage payments are made – so who really owns your house?

Of course when we finally make all the payments and get our hands on the deeds then it is our house, then we will really do own the house! But for how long? We have ‘moved on’ in life a little now and we may find we have to remortgage again to pay expenses such as helping our children or even to pay for nursing care – we may find we have little time to enjoy our hard earned dwelling.

So a mortgage is simply a device to allow us to think we own the house – but in reality what we own is at first a tiny fraction, later maybe a half and later still, with much hard lobour and persistence the whole house. But beware! If you miss your payments a few times the ‘beneficial bank’ is quite ready to repossess and does not bother to grant back what you have paid before the repo takes place. It will happily sell your property to pay itself what is still outstanding and if the sale does not fetch enough your ‘beneficial bank’ will bill you again for the rest!

So why do we not rent at about half the usual mortgage payment rate and have much more free money, as they do in real Europe? ‘Because this way we can get our own house’ you may say.

But sadly this hope is often just an unfulfilled dream.