How many Crouch End homeowners have paid their mortgage off?

In this week’s article on the Crouch End property market, I look at the number of people locally who own their home with and without a mortgage, breaking those stats down by age range. From that information, the issue of retired people having a mortgage is highlighted and also how homeownership is changing slowly to a more European model.

The Government’s Annual Housing Survey is 50 years old this year. It has taken a snap shot of the UK’s property market every year since 1969 and in the recently published report for 2018, it wasn’t a surprise that owner occupation is still the most predominant tenure, yet now more people own their home without a mortgage rather than having a mortgage as the number people buying their first home (obviously with a mortgage) has declined since the Millennium.
The report also shows homeowners (mortgaged and owned outright) are, on average, older than renters and between the homeowners themselves, those who are mortgage free are older than those with a mortgage.
Looking at the most recent of data for Haringey, I wanted to see how we compared to the national picture. Therefore, focusing on the main 4 tenures of owned outright, owned with a mortgage, social housing (i.e. Council Housing and Housing Association) and private rented, this is what I found out…

Insert Haringey – Tenure by age photo

Looking at the stats, you can see that homeownership in Crouch End and council area as a whole (both owned and owned with a mortgage combined) is lower in the 25yo to 34yo age range compared to 35yo to 49yo, yet roll the clock back to the 1980s and opposite was the case.
So how many local homeowners have paid off their mortgage?
39.7% of Crouch End and Haringey homeowners are mortgage free, yet of the 12,136 households that are owned by 50yo to 64yo in Crouch End and the Haringey area, 56% of those people still have a mortgage.
As most people bought their first house in their early to mid 20’s back in the 1980’s, this shows that a lot of Crouch End and Haringey people must have re-mortgaged in the past and extended their borrowings (otherwise they should have paid their mortgage off now).
The other thing that concerns me is the 5.7% of the Crouch End and Haringey over 75yo homeowners that have a mortgage.
If you amalgamate the national historic ranges going back to 1977 (see the graph below “UK Households with a Mortgage by Age – 1977 to 2018” and note the age bands are slightly different to the recent local stats because they were carried out under different government departments), you will see the number of people who own a property with a mortgage has been dropping since the Millennium, yet nationally the number of people who own a property has remained roughly the same, even with the growth of the private rented sector.

Insert UK Households with a Mortgage photo

Reports in the industry suggest that in the next ten years that will increase, as nearly 1 in 5 homeowners will be still paying off their mortgage after retirement. One of the reasons behind that will be the legacy of interest-only loans and delayed first-time buying as we become more and more like Germany in our house ownership models, where people naturally rent their homes until their 50’s and then buy when they inherit money from their parents.
In the meantime, demand for Crouch End rental properties will only increase … so good news for Crouch End Buy to Let landlords and indirectly Crouch End homeowners as well.

David Astburys

15 Park Road
Crouch End
London
N8 8TE

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