How to take years off your mortgage | Money | The Guardian

How to take years off your mortgage | Money | The Guardian

For years we treated our homes like cash machines, borrowing against their rising value and then using the unlocked money to splash out on new conservatories, cars, expensive holidays and the like.

Now, as seems appropriate in this age of austerity, we are "reloading the ATM", and repaying mortgage debt like never before. Official figures this week revealed that homeowners paid off their mortgages at a record rate in the final three months of last year. All told, we reduced our mortgage debt by £7bn between October and December.

While the data partly reflects homebuyers having to put down much bigger deposits, it also shows that large numbers of people have realised that in the current climate it makes sense to pay off as much debt as possible and are making mortgage overpayments.