Britain's super-rich cash in on low interest rates with £1m mortgages

[AtW]

Depends why they have the mortgage.

They are superrich, but decided to get a mortgage to be more in touch with the common people.

[OwlHoot]

Can someone with a mortgage be described as 'super rich' - I think not.

Depends why they have the mortgage.

If they pay less interest on that than they reliably make from some other investment, then yes it makes sense to have a mortgage even if they don't need it.

Plus it's a way of upping their credit rating. Ludicrous as it sounds, some pretty rich people actually have a "poor" credit rating because their cards are never in debit.

[AtW]

Can someone with a mortgage be described as 'super rich' - I think not.

It's like calling Britain superrich on the basis that it's got over 1 trillion debt...

Them Lefties, can't live with them, can't live without

[DodgyAgent]

Can someone with a mortgage be described as 'super rich' - I think not.

Spot on

[Waldorf]

Can someone with a mortgage be described as 'super rich' - I think not.

[barrydidit]

Only if your tenants pay

Most people it's their home so they have an incentive to pay. In your case it was an interesting excursion into the lowest strata of west Yorkshire society so I can understand a reluctance to pay :-)

Also, ive got a 'no jocks' sign for the window when it's empty so I reckon I'm safe now..

[TestMangler]

Mortgages? Aren't they the things tenants pay on your behalf?

Only if your tenants pay

[barrydidit]

Mortgages? Aren't they the things tenants pay on your behalf?

[DodgyAgent]

£1.5 mil mine

[TykeMerc]

one in 14 borrowers now have mortgages of more than £500,000

That's the really disturbing piece of information in the report.

[AtW]

"Britain’s property bubble has created a new phenomenon: the rise of the £1m mortgage.

Figures obtained by the Guardian reveal how in the last year the number of £1m-plus mortgages granted by the major mortgage lenders has jumped by nearly a fifth, while one in 14 borrowers now have mortgages of more than £500,000.

Nationwide building society disclosed that it has 269 customers who have taken out mortgages of more than £1m, compared with 167 this time last year. NatWest, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, said it granted 233 mortgages of more than £1m in 2014, and so far this year has issued another 207. It expects to finish 2015 with lending in this bracket up by 18%.

Financial regulators require the super-rich to go through the same affordability checks demanded of more humble first-time buyers before they are granted a loan – with some unusual results. Ray Boulger of mortgage brokers John Charcol said: “We were going through the expenditure section with one such client and we asked how much his travelling expenses were. He said: ‘I don’t know. I have a plane.’”

The supersize loans taken to buy trophy properties in central London tend to come from private banks rather than familiar high street names. Land Registry data shows that of the 100 most expensive properties sold in the UK last year, UBS of Switzerland lent against 10 of them, worth £173m in total. HSBC, Credit Suisse, Barclays, Coutts and JP Morgan were the next biggest lenders. "

Source: Britain's super-rich cash in on low interest rates with £1m mortgages | Money | The Guardian

Yeah, good reason to increase BoE rates - to punish those SUPER rich buying fancy homes in Looooooooooodooooooooooooon!!!

Somebody needs to tell the Guardian that anybody who is borrowing money to buy a house is not superrich, not even rich if it's £1 mln house in London, they are SUPERdesperate.