{"id":3533,"date":"2019-02-20T12:15:03","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T12:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mouthymoney.co.uk\/?p=3533"},"modified":"2025-03-03T10:55:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T10:55:50","slug":"my-life-110-subprime-mortgage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mouthymoney.co.uk\/mortgages\/my-life-110-subprime-mortgage\/","title":{"rendered":"Like giving crack to a cocaine addict: my life with a 110% subprime mortgage"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2005, I was given a 110% mortgage by a mainstream lender. For\u00a0a feckless\u00a029 year old with a history of bad debt,\u00a0it was like pushing crack\u00a0on a cocaine addict.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that’s a bit strong \u2013 but that “free” money can be financially lethal, if not literally so. To this day, I see it as one of the most irresponsible things any business has ever done to me. Yet, it was commonplace at the time and for that reason I won\u2019t name and shame the lender.<\/p>\n

Oh screw it, it was Northern Rock.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been working as a journalist for a national newspaper in London. This time I\u2019m really not going to name names due to sheer embarrassment \u2013 the paper used to support the Nazis\u00a0and is the only paper in the world to be banned as a credible source by Wikipedia. You know the one.<\/p>\n

The rabbit hutch I\u2019d been living in near Kensington High Street was being sold and, as a friend of mine \u2013 a biscuit designer \u2013 lived a short commute away in Brighton (this was before Southern Rail abolished<\/a> the concept of achievable commutes), I decided to do a bit of sofa surfing on the south coast.<\/p>\n

Once more, you’ll notice, I’ve declined to name a name \u2013 this time, the biscuit designer\u2019s. I will continue unapologetically in this manner as I have no wish to keep London’s libel lawyers in gin and funny wigs. And if you think the people in this blog post are you, there’s an outside chance you’re wrong. But it’s slim.<\/p>\n

I was a card-carrying, flag-waving, ocean-going member of the UK\u2019s large subprime community.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They call Brighton “The Graveyard of Ambition” because when Londoners move there (it\u2019s always Londoners), they never move away. But they carry on working in the capital before eventually getting sick of the unachievable commute and taking much poorer paid jobs locally so they can continue living by the sea.<\/p>\n

I was immediately bitten by the Brighton bug and suggested buying a flat with my biscuit designer friend (I’m going to call him ‘Dave’ because I can’t think of any other names). At that point, house prices were rising as quickly as the credit was flowing.<\/p>\n

So Dave and I decided to buy a two-bedroom flat together\u00a0on the sort of whim that might persuade you to change up from Debenhams to Calvin Klein boxer shorts.<\/p>\n

They gave us money for nice furniture.\u00a0A year\u00a0later we were still watching TV in two fishing chairs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In terms of risk, I wasn\u2019t 100% prime or even near-prime. I was a card-carrying, flag-waving, ocean-going member of the UK\u2019s large subprime community.\u00a0I viewed cash machines\u00a0in the way\u00a0normal people view fruit machines, whooping with joy on the rare occasions they paid out.<\/p>\n

But no-one at the bank seemed to care about my credit-worthiness.\u00a0In fact, the heart-warmingly generous lending manager\u00a0reminded us we’d need something to sit on and asked us whether we might want a few extra grand for some nice furniture.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a year and we were still watching TV in two fishing chairs \u2013 you know the ones with beer holders. There was no nice furniture.<\/p>\n

\"Pic
Fishing chairs: definitely better outside than in.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So where had the money gone?<\/p>\n

In the mildest of salutes to responsibility, we’d both paid off credit cards \u2013 and then started using them again. We’d also shrunk our overdrafts to almost nothing \u2013 and then watched as they rebounded enthusiastically into the red.<\/p>\n

I asked\u00a0Dave just yesterday if he remembered how poor we were.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be stupid,” he said. “We were loaded; we lived like kings \u2013 well, for a while anyway. I was the only\u00a0biscuit designer\u00a0in East or West Sussex who had a plasma TV on my bedroom ceiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

He really did. No girlfriend \u2013 but a plasma on the ceiling. Class.<\/p>\n

We also had the most expensive Sky TV package, the fastest broadband, and the most luxurious health club membership.\u00a0We were living a bit like\u00a0Withnail and I<\/a>. Dave\u00a0was the decadent and devil-may-care ‘Withnail’ and I was ‘I’, the worrier who reluctantly participated in the high life, nonetheless.<\/p>\n

But reality soon caught up with us. We began missing payments on bills. Letters from phone companies, banks and credit card companies became a daily occurrence. Honestly, we had more mail than the BBC at one point. Luxury items, like the gym and Sky TV, were cancelled.<\/p>\n

Everything turned to shit. You don\u2019t realise how depressing it was until you look back at it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I remember a particularly sad moment when we\u00a0both ended our contract with the Grosvenor fine wines club.\u00a0But the fiscal environment had worsened too. Dark clouds were gathering.<\/p>\n

Interest rates had risen and the mortgage repayments, which were variable, climbed sharply. I was forced to change jobs and took a \u00a310k pay cut. Everything turned to shit. You don\u2019t realise how depressing it was until you look back at it. For the next few years, money was a constant worry. And it drove a wedge between Dave and me.<\/p>\n

As I’ve implied, Dave was a little bit more irresponsible \u2013 or Withnailish \u2013 than me and always seemed to owe me money. Communication broke down until it was conducted almost exclusively by half-smudged\u00a0Post-it notes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If we\u2019d just rented, like we should have, we wouldn\u2019t have gotten into that mess.<\/p>\n

And we\u00a0*were<\/strong>*\u00a0in a mess.\u00a0Dave got really close to bankruptcy and eventually became the shamed-faced owner of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Credit wonks will know what that is but, for the cooler kids,\u00a0it\u2019s a way of avoiding bankruptcy and involves brokering deals with all your creditors to come up with a single monthly payment that\u2019s shared between them. You commit to pay consistently and, in return, they stop levying interest and charges.<\/p>\n

Things took a turn for the (even) worse when Dave moved to Casablanca, saddling me with the whole debt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What saved me from that was the mortgage holidays we took. Mortgage holidays, you say? Oh yes! You can stop paying your mortgage for a few months. But, of course, that too has its downsides. The interest from the monthly payment you\u2019ve decided to take as a payment holiday gets added to your mortgage. If you\u2019ve ever taken one of these holidays or inquired about them, you\u2019ll have noticed that they add a few pounds a month to your future mortgage payments.<\/p>\n

Oh, and then things got even worse. Swaggering like a modern day Humphrey\u00a0Bogart, Dave\u00a0literally moved\u00a0to Casablanca, in Morocco, where\u00a0the biscuit design industry was booming. He somehow persuaded me to take legal ownership of the whole negative-equity-ridden flat, saddling me with the entire debt.<\/p>\n

Helen put a stiletto up my behind and told me to get a proper job.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, look. I\u2019m still here. I\u2019m a survivor! So how did I pull through?<\/p>\n

Love, actually.<\/p>\n

Yes, I met my then future and now current wife, Helen, and moved in with her, enabling me to rent out the Money Pit so that it paid for itself. I also got a great job \u2013 in Brighton. So much for The Graveyard of Ambition. I think, looking back, that was Helen\u2019s doing too, since she put a stiletto up my behind and told me to get a proper job.<\/p>\n

So I was able, slowly, to pay off my debts and now, 14 years later, I owe roughly what the asking price of the house was when we bought it in 2005. But, of course, it\u2019s worth a lot more \u2013 about \u00a370k more \u2013 and provides a good rental income.<\/p>\n

So what did I learn?<\/p>\n

First, avoid mortgage holidays. In fact, if you need one \u2013 and there\u2019s no serious change in your circumstances \u2013 you probably shouldn\u2019t have a mortgage in the first place.<\/p>\n

But, actually, you should think about whether a mortgage is right for you in the first place. Renting would almost certainly have suited Dave and me better.<\/p>\n

Finally, be careful who you buy with. I don’t mean Northern Rock, in my case. I mean Dave. If you\u2019re going to buy with someone \u2013 if you have a Dave or Davina in your life \u2013 make sure they\u2019re not the sort of person who thinks a ceiling-mounted plasma TV is cool.<\/p>\n

My experiences and the lessons I learned inspired me to pass on that knowledge that now seems embarrassingly obvious \u2013 but never was \u2013 to others. This was one of the motivations I had when creating Mouthy Money<\/a>\u00a0alongside the site’s editor,\u00a0Amy Rowe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As you can see (you\u2019re on it now), it\u2019s a money blog \u2013 or digital magazine \u2013 with some 20 writers telling inspiring stories about their every day money challenges and successes. There\u2019s loads here about mortgages and house buying so, please, take a look around. Touch things, if you really have to. But don’t break anything.<\/p>\n

We’re different from the typical money blogger site because we don’t target people who\u00a0think they need financial advice. Our audience is people who enjoy reading about other people’s\u00a0lives and\u00a0learning from their mistakes and successes.<\/p>\n

They’re\u00a0people who hate reading about finance but love\u00a0reading\u00a0about people’s financial decisions.<\/p>\n

Before I go, I’ll leave you with another quote from Dave.\u00a0I asked him what advice he might have for people thinking of\u00a0getting a mortgage.<\/p>\n

He thought for a minute, took a swig from what I now imagine to have been a\u00a0Malibu and Coke and said: “If you can afford it, do it. If you can’t, do it\u00a0anyway. It’ll be all right in the end.”<\/p>\n

And, speaking as\u00a0Dave’s chief\u00a0creditor, that is most definitely NOT the moral of this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2005, I was given a 110% mortgage by a mainstream lender. For\u00a0a feckless\u00a029 year old with a history of bad debt,\u00a0it was like pushing crack\u00a0on a cocaine addict. Perhaps that’s a bit strong \u2013 but that “free” money can be financially lethal, if not literally so. To this day, I see it as one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[46,11,17,20,54,22,58,65,67,61,62,25,64],"class_list":["post-3533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mortgages","tag-alcohol","tag-credit-card","tag-food","tag-home","tag-homeownership","tag-jobs","tag-legal","tag-money","tag-mortgage","tag-rent","tag-risk","tag-sad-face","tag-savings","post_format-post-format-image"],"yoast_head":"\nLike giving crack to a cocaine addict: my life with a 110% subprime mortgage - Mouthy Money<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mouthymoney.co.uk\/mortgages\/my-life-110-subprime-mortgage\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Like giving crack to a cocaine addict: my life with a 110% subprime mortgage - Mouthy Money\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 2005, I was given a 110% mortgage by a mainstream lender. 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For\u00a0a feckless\u00a029 year old with a history of bad debt,\u00a0it was like pushing crack\u00a0on a cocaine addict. Perhaps that’s a bit strong \u2013 but that “free” money can be financially lethal, if not literally so. 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