Here’s the other side of the ‘housing crisis’. Rents are up by an above-inflation percentage, based as much on demand vs supply as the ‘I’ word itself. Many amateur or single property landlords are pulling out and selling up, as rents aren’t covering their increased mortgage payments or the amount they’d have to spend to bring their buy-to-let up to the required environmental standard. Which leaves those still in the game with a queue of prospective tenants for whom renting is the only option (unless they’re related to a bank chairman or similar). We’re famously one of the few European countries for whom renting rather than buying has something of a ‘failure’ stigma. Maggie (kids etc) is, I fear, to blame, but things are changing. For the better? Jury’s out.
“Should you fix your mortgage forever?”
In the US (and, randomly, Denmark) it’s the norm to fix-rate your mortgage for the life of your mortgage. For us and most others, it’s now usual to fix your mortgage rate, but only for a couple or five years at most.
