this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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I don't know what the situation is in your country, but here's an example from the UK.
Imagine you bought a £500k house in London just after the pandemic. The mortgage rates were around 1.2-1.3%. You could afford monthly payments at the time, everything looked cool. Now a couple years later the war in Ukraine starts, economy tanks and interest rates go over 7%. Now your monthly payments become 3-4x higher and you're fucked. You lose your house, become homeless and you still owe half a mil. The end.
Interesting to see the difference. In the US it's most common for mortgages to be "fixed rate" and remain the same for the entire loan period. Downside is a higher base percentage, we got down to about 2.6-2.7% in the same time period. Upside is that your payment will never go up.
Yeah, that's the difference. But in general British mortgages are much cheaper. That also leads to a situation, that people invest free money instead of over paying their mortgages. I'm still on 1.32% for example, while even my basic savings account pays me 4.5%.
The interest rates going up was because of Liz Truss and her loony huge unfunded tax cut for the most wealthy.
The war against Ukraine was the spark for the separate general inflation profiteering that started with the energy generating companies.
The situation in Norway is luckily a bit better than that, but I've heard from friends that their mortgages became a bit more expensive the last couple of years. Shit, is it really that bad in the UK? People's payments tripled or even quadrupled? Sounds like capitalist dystopia.
From what I can gather the payments didn't increase near that much in Norway, and we have solutions like exemption from down payments among other things for situations like the one we're in now. I know some people with really expensive homes sold them and bought smaller cheaper ones to lighten the economic load, and a lot of people defaulted on expensive car loans. I think the situation hit people with expensive homes and cars the hardest because a lot of those people weren't willing to adjust to the reality.
If I was allowed to get a loan I wouldn't have gone over 1/3 of my income, just like with the rent I pay today. I'd manage, but they're incredibly strict with who gets one.
It was that bad for a short while, but plenty of people had to re-mortgage during that short while and they got burned real hard. But due to borrowing limitations no one became homeless. That's the point of them. I know it doesn't feel fair, but I saw myself all that happening and I'm happy that banks don't trust people anymore - it's better that way for everyone involved.
Norway didn't have Liz Truss crashing the economy and causing a run on the pound. It always comes down to trusting right wingers with the economy.
Seeing the way things have been going in different countries the last couple of years have given me a newfound gratitude for the country I live in. Even our most right wing party is left wing by any international standard.
Yup. When the UK had big revenues from oil, Margaret Thatcher spent it on tax cuts. Norway invested it for the future of the nation.
So everyone else should bail you out? That's what it is
Not sure what you're talking about...