Mortgage rate in 1990?

A split second on google shows that in 1990 the common sort of rate was 14.5 percent. Special offers would depend on the society you ask. But since the B of E base was 14 percent there won't be a lot cheaper .

mrcheerful

Ok, Thanks.

Yup. I got my first mortgage then and that was the rate offered by practically everyone. There weren't the myriad of special deals you get now, the only discount you could get was a 1% discount for a year if you were daft enough to take out an endowment. Practically everyone was telling you that taking out an endowment was a good idea - I still get a smug feeling of self satisfaction that I ignored them all and insisted on a repayment....

"Andy Pandy" wrote

Why? People taking endowments back then are now getting paid compensation, to put them back into the same position now that they would have been in, had they taken repayment instead. But they had the chance of endowments doing better (OK, we know now that they didn't).

So, if in 1990 you believed that endowments were being mis-sold, your best course of action would have been to take one! [Assuming of course that your crystal ball didn't also extend to predicting investment returns & interest rates into the future, so you didn't really know which would end up better...]

If the endowment had been better than repayment, then you'd keep quiet. If the endowment came out worse than repayment (as most have done), then simply claim misselling & get an extra payout to put you in the position you'd have been with a repayment. Either way, you'd be in the best situation now out of the two possibilities (regardless of what investment returns had done over the last 15 years).

It's mainly that the clueless staff who were doing the misselling genuinely seemed to believe that endowments were a no-brainer. As well as the clueless people who bought them.

I did invest in shares etc, I still have a PEP from then which has done well (the stock market is well up on 1990), but I knew the charges etc on endowments were a rip-off, plus their inflexibility.

Hmm... maybe sometimes it pays to be thick!

Wonder why it's only financial services that get this amount of stick for salespeople selling products that makes the most commission. Why can't people sue double glazing companies for much more blatent "misselling" like telling people they're getting a big discount for being a showhome etc...

"Tim" wrote

Indeed. In fact, anyone who took out a repayment mortgage in 1990 should be thinking about suing their IFA. If they'd taken out an endowment mortgage they'd have had a free option on whichever turned out best.

"John Redman" wrote in message news:d9kbl8$otq$ snipped-for-privacy@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...

You're right! I'll sue them for denying me the opportunity to sue them to put me into the position I am in now having taken out a repayment.

Quite so. If you'd taken out an endowment you'd have either made money versus a repayment or been compensated for having lost. Only a repayment offered no chance of free money so clearly you were ripped off.

"John Redman" wrote in message news:d9koq5$2rv$ snipped-for-privacy@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk...

Well I did consult my crystal ball which told me that there would be a misselling scandal around endowments, and that nanny state would step in and the mugs that bought them would be compensated.

But it also told me that their performance would be crap. So I'd be in same position regardless, but I'd have to admit to being thick had I bought an endowment, and grovel for compo. So I didn't bother.

Only if the IFA *advised* them to take the repayment!

"John Redman" wrote

Not so - Andy clearly "self-selected" the repayment, and ignored the saleman's advice to take an endowment. Hence he can't now sue for having been given bad advice, when the advice is (now shown to have been) the best course of action, but he ignored it!!

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"Andy Pandy" wrote

But it was only the best if it was being mis-sold! Plenty of people got sold endowments without them actually being mis-sold. Simply having bought an endowment 15 years ago wouldn't automatically make you eligible for compensation.

I don't think any of the banks/building societies I went to technically tried mis-selling me an endowment - they recommended them and stressed the "likely lump sum at the end", and used the "well 80% of our customers take endowments" as the main selling point (like *that* was a good reason). None gave me an assurance that it would pay the mortgage off.

Also I had paid most of that mortgage off before the endowment mis-selling compo gravy train started - I've heard of people whose claims were rejected because they'd paid the mortgage off, and scaled down if they'd paid part of it off.

So it would have been far from a "no lose gamble". In fact is was more like a "no win" gamble - as the chances of the endowment doing better was far lower than the chances of a compo claim being unsuccessful.

So I'll remain a smug bastard.

The Halifax Economic Factbook spreadsheet which uses data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) say that the average mortgage rate was 14.3%

You might be able to get FTB rates from the CML site.

Daytona

"Andy Pandy" wrote

Not so much thick as greedy, venal, and thoroughly cynical, which equips you to be a Cabinet minister, so where's the problem?