New figures published this week has revealed that people in the UK with a mortgage are doing better from current financial conditions than savers. The data, published by the Bank of England (BoE), revealed that UK mortgage-holders paid a total of £1,328 billion in mortgage interest in between December 2008 and December 2011, compared to £1,897 billion in the three years before that. This represents an average saving per mortgage-holder of £50,820. During this period, savers were substantially worse off, according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, since the BoEs decision to drop the base rate of interest to an historically low 0.5 per cent caused them to lose out particularly if they were using cash Isa accounts. Before the credit crunch forced the interest rate cut, many savings accounts were paying around 5 per cent interest per annum, or even more. The rule does not apply to all mortgage-holders, however. The Telegraphs analysis was based on the assumption than all these people were on the best value tracker mortgages, although many would have been on fixed-rate mortgages or capped loans. Furthermore, inflation rates will have negated many of the benefits brought by the mortgage savings. There has also remained a large gulf between price and income when it comes to the UK property market overall and the stagnation in UK wages has tended to exacerbate this problem, while British savers are often in possession of properties worth a great deal of money, which they bought way back when prices were lower.
UK Mortgage-Holders ‘Better Off Than Savers’
Published on 24 February 2020
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