Guitar Licks

I can’t believe that we’ve owned our house for almost 7 years. For a time we didn’t think we’d ever be able to own a house. In fact it was my wife that finally convinced me that we could do it and you know what she was right. We are doing better in our own home than when we rented an apartment.

I think it was the whole idea of applying formortgages that scared me. Well applying for one, getting it and having to pay it off. We were really lucky though when we got our mortgage. The interest was unbelievably low at the time and for the first six months we didn’t even pay any interest, then we paid 0.5% for another 6 months or so … and then it slowly crept up to about 3.75% by the end of the first 5 years that we owned our home. Obviously we had a variable mortgage. Even though our interest rates increased over the years that we had the first mortgage ours was still lower than many of our friends who purchased their homes just before we did, or even a few months later. Our timing was fantastic!

Last year we applied for a mortgage renewal. Since it was our first renewal that was a bit scary. We actually toyed with the idea of either getting one of those secured loans or perhaps even to Remortgage when we were renewing because we are in the middle of renovating and we’d slowed down for a bit. I wanted to just borrow some money and hire someone to finish the work, but we decided not to do that.

When we did get our first mortgage we found it nerve wracking. The banks look into your credit history and want to know all the nitty gritty details of your finances before they’ll approve your mortgage request. Plus you never know how much of a mortgage you’ll qualify for until they tell you. Now that we’ve been through all of that I’m glad the bank did their homework on us and checked us out thoroughly. I mean, they approved a mortgage that we’d be able to pay. Wouldn’t it have been awful if they let us decide how much of a mortgage we wanted for a home and it ended up that we’d purchased a home that we couldn’t really manage the payments for? That’d be awful.

The mortgage that we were approved for was a little less than we’d been hoping for, but as you can see, we managed to get a house that we’re very happy with, in a great neighborhood, close to work and we’re happy with what we ended up having. We can afford it. The payments are more than manageable, even with my wife off work due to illness, and we’ve even managed to pay a bit extra on our mortgage so if we’re lucky we might have it all payed off in less than 15 years.

How have things turned out for you with your home mortgages? Or Do you even have a home? If you don’t - are you a bit nervous about going through the whole buying and mortgage approval process?