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Mortgages can be a very stressful process for people to go through, especially if you find yourself needing a bad credit mortgage, but by choosing to use a mortgage adviser, such as Twin Pine Mortgages, a lot of the hassle and headaches are taken out of the equation for you. This leaves you with the time to enjoy things in life, like these fun mortgage facts for example.
Painting the door red
This first fact won’t help you with your mortgage process but it may come up in a pub quiz, so it could be worth remembering. For some people, choosing the colour that they paint their door may come down to their favourite shade at the time of buying their house, for others they may be trying to Feng Shui their homes and base their colour choice on these practices, but for some homeowners in Scotland, their decision is based on something entirely different. Did you know that in Scotland, people often paint their front door red after they’re fully paid off their mortgages?
According to wcmanet, the reasoning behind this is simple. Traditionally, Scottish people would do this because red was the most expensive colour that they could buy, in other words, they could afford the costly paint because they didn’t need to spend the money on their mortgage anymore. Although today, some people in Scotland do carry this tradition on, the cost of the paint has nothing to do with the colour choice.
The origin or mortgage
This is another fact that you can keep up your sleeve for an episode of ‘The chase’ or a Zoom quiz with your friends. The word mortgage has quite a macabre origin as it derives from the French term “Mort Gaige” which can be translated to mean “dead pledge.”
After reading this, you may be wondering why this is on a list of ‘fun mortgage facts’ but it doesn’t actually mean what you may think. It refers to the mortgage or debt ‘dying’ after it has been paid off, rather than you taking a death pledge for a house.
Fixed-rate mortgages
This fact is less fun and more factual, but we enjoy it all the same. Did you know that the first fixed-rate mortgage was offered in 1971? At this point, mortgages were offered with an interest rate of 7.5%, but in the following decade rates jumped to almost 20%. According to Academymortgage, these drastic climbs were a result of changes in the market, high rates of unemployment and of course, the recession. These high-interest rates were a way for the banks to attempt to stabilise the economy, but luckily, in the UK today, interest rates are at an all-time low, so there has never been a better time to get a mortgage than right now.
Remortgage with bad credit
We'll keep this fact short and sweet. You CAN still remortgage with bad credit.
Mortgage providers like us specialise in helping people with bad credit to remortgage. So, if your credit score isn’t perfect and you’re looking to remortgage, don’t despair – there are options out there for you.
Buy to let mortgage bad credit
If you're a landlord with a fairly bad credit score, you might be surprised by this next fact.
Not all lenders will use a credit score to assess a buy-to-let mortgage application. Buy to let mortgage providers will consider your mortgage application on its own merits, rather than just looking at your credit score. This means that having bad credit won’t necessarily stop you from getting a mortgage to buy a property to rent out.
Although, having a specialist mortgage broker in your corner can make a big difference when you’re looking for a buy-to-let mortgage with bad credit.
First time buyer bad credit mortgage
We're at the end of our list of fun mortgage facts, and we're going to leave you on a (fairly) positive note. According to Finder, the average age of a first-time buyer in the UK is 34 years old.
So if you're still in your mid-20s and feel like you're never going to be able to get onto the property ladder, don't worry - you've got plenty of time.
If you're a first time buyer with bad credit, you might be wondering if you can get a mortgage. The good news is that there are plenty of mortgage options available for people with less-than-perfect credit.
As mortgage specialists, we can help make the process of finding you your first mortgage a lot simpler, even with an imperfect credit score.
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Although they may seem scary, there are a lot of interesting mortgage facts which can make them seem a little friendlier. We hope that you were able to learn something about mortgages from this blog, even if that is something that you will only pull out on a Zoom call quiz. If you have any questions regarding your mortgage process please contact us today.