SUE’S GUIDE TO A Mortgage In Later Life
Consumer expert Sue Hayward’s savvy finance tips and advice
Most of us don’t expect to be paying off our mortgage in our seventies or eighties, but these days it’s becoming more of a reality.
It’s unlikely you’ll be looking to buy your first home at seventy, but if you’ve had an interest-only mortgage and can’t repay the original loan when the mortgage ends, you may need to extend your mortgage term. Or you may want to remortgage for home improvements if you’re staying put.
Rewind five years and nobody was going to rubber stamp a mortgage deal that you’d be repaying in your eighties. In fact the cut-off was typically 70 – 75.
But now more lenders are offering Later Life Lending with over 1,000 products on the market according to the experts at Moneyfacts. And some building societies like the Newbury have an upper age limit of 90 years!
Each lender has its own rules and some don’t set age limits, including Bath, Cambridge, Ipswich. Others like the Family Building Society will lend up to age 95, or 90 with the Newbury, and 85 with Nationwide.
If you’re after money for home improvements then Equity Release could be another option depending on your situation, although interest rates tend to be higher. In this case you don’t make monthly repayments, unlike typical mortgages, but the interest can be “rolled up” and the debt repaid once your house is sold, when you die, or go into long term care. But do take advice if you’re considering this option.