I would suggest they bought it with the expectation that it would be self financing and they could rent out when not using it themselves.

I don't know what a paramedic earns? 390K in mortgage seems a lot for a couple with two teenage kids to support.

Too many of them watch TV programs like Place in the Sun!
They believe what they hear about expected rental income,... but we all of us here know that there are and have been for many years now unoccupied holiday rentals by the thousand.

Of course the banks play a huge part in all of this, and we have to ask ourselves why they let a couple run up such a large dept in the first place.

Things didn't get so messy in the days when the banks would only lend on one income not two, and they certainly wouldn't have financed a second home mortgage until the first one was fully paid up.

Perhaps people should learn once more to cut the coat according to the width of the cloth!

Yes I have seen some of those programmes. Amanada Lamb saying some dump would rent for £400 pw

Something not right about that story in the DM. Would be interested to see the outcome.

I think I may have met the people concerned in that article.

If it is the same people that I have met, I thought they were over-reaching themselves at the time.

Ah - so it's your fault - you should have said something at the time !!

Only joking. But I have a little sympathy for those caught up in the housing bubble. You could see all manner of idiot/wise investors making money by borrowing vast amounts of money to buy property, as house values "only ever went up". Why work hard when you could make money as you slept? In fact those of us who either chose not to buy, or (in my case) because we didn't have the steady job/regular income, were derided as fools. Perhaps we were, as many did make a packet on the housing helter-skelter. But I can't blame those who speculated, as for a time it was indeed easy money, made possible by lax lending from the banks. Who are now being baled-out by us, the taxpayers.

I hasten to add I don't know the people well! I met them briefly at someone else's house, also we gave them a lift to the airport once, and they were telling me all about their 'grand designs' and I remember thinking it was all going to end in tears.

I didn't know them well enough to say what I thought!