The average mortgage term is now 30 years, the only way the average loan needed to buy the average home can made be affordable to the average borrower. And here’s proof, were it needed, that things are about to go wrong again. Yes, those in the poorest areas aren’t likely to have deposits or funds to buy or do up the grotty properties they’re renting but encouraging them to with 110% mortgages (last offered by Northern Rock RIP in 2008) seems madness. Any slowdown, let alone recession, will first hit the jobs of those who can least afford to lose them. We’ll be back to the misery of negative equity, arrears and repossessions which were all supposed to be things of the past following the post-banking crisis ‘never again’ reforms. Full circle. Again.
“Why most won’t need to worry about IHT on pensions”
Many a government has made the point that only a minority will be affected by this or that tax change or tinker. It is, however, both perception and aspiration which are important, and they are what makes IHT the ‘most hated’ of all taxes – along with all the others, of course.
