Paying Off the Mortgage

[Moscow Mule]

Do you not pay capital gains on a property if you've paid off the mortgage? Or is that a wife's tale?

CGT is payable on disposal of assets, not when you've paid for them.

[Platypus]

CGT is payable on disposal of assets, not when you've paid for them.

Also your main residence is exempt from CGT

[DimPrawn]

mortgage rate + inflation rate, presumeably ?

Only if your house price is going up > inflation.

If you pay off your mortgage and the value of your house is going down 10% p.a and inflation is +10% per annum, when you retire it will be worthless, so no worse than paying it into a pension.

Who cares anyway?

[brianrhill]

Consider remortgaging to a flexible mortgage that you can move money in and out of as you like. In the event that you need to get another mortgage later on, it's easier to do so if you have a mortgage in place rather than an "unencumbered" property (no mortgage), and you'll find getting credit etc later on won't be affected.

Brian