With no mortgage it is more favourable to buy in Spain. Savings rates are low and you wont be exposed to interest rate rises.

Just make sure you buy a place you want to stay at for at least 10 years. As things can take years to sell and as mentioned you will need to pay 7-10% of the property value in tax each time you move house.

As I own more than one property I pray for inflation Its made a developer friend a multi millionaire

I'm not sure praying for inflation is the right thing to do

If interest rates go above 5%, and even above 10%, then millions of people in the UK and Spain wont be able pay their mortgage and will get their property repossesed. (there is no chance that salaries would increase at the same pace)

So there will be a flood of properties on the market which will depress the house prices even more - and there will be noone to buy them as they will all be bankrupt! Leaving investors free to pick up properties for next to nothing and rent them back out to the people who have lost their property.

That'd be your chance to get rich

What were interest rates pre the recession 5-6-7%? If home owners could pay then why not now?

Because pre-recession, many mortgage holders were on cheap fixed rate mortgages that lasted 2-3 years. And the relatively high rates of interest only lasted 12 months or so.

It is now impossible to get a cheap fixed rate mortgage so most are on base rate trackers at maybe 2.5-3% above the BoE interest rate. So once 0.5% becomes 5% then people will be paying 8% interest whereas 3 years ago they were only paying 4-5% fixed rate.

Mortgage products over the past few years have been incredibly incompetitive and are setting everybody up for a fall.

Ive seen inetrest much higher than that and yes a few suffered but not millions ,UK property wont go down much more if at all over the next year, you will probably see a 0.5% rise pm like most of last year.

No not everybody.......there are millions of people who dont have mortgages and savers who cant wait for the interest rates to rise. The sooner the better I say.

Well, of course

The only point I wanted to make is that things are likely to get worse before they get better. And high inflation will be bad news to anyone who has bought in the last 7-8 years.

Which will mean anyone under 35 is likely to suffer, but those over 55 with mortgages paid off or nearly paid off, shouldnt be any worse off

I doubt even Daniel Shenton would agree with your prediction.

I can remember when my mortgage rate was over 14%, but I don't remember millions of repossessions, a flood of properties for sale or all home owners going bankrupt.

I remember that too, but then people didn`t start with a 3% loan that was already over their heads, imagine what would happen if they can only just afford the 3% and it goes to 14%.

Exactly, thats the whole point

In the early 90s people had mortgages at 3-4 times a single salary. Now people have them at 5-6 times joint salary.

It only takes a rise in interest rates or one of the two to lose their jobs and suddenly they are in deep trouble

Btw, maybe "millions" is too many, but we could expect around half a million reposessions, that wouldnt surprise me.

I disagree ...We had just got married and taken out our first-ever mortgage ... and within months the rates rose we both had to do a full day in the office then spend each night and weekend lunchtime and evenings working in the pub for the extra cash we needed to pay it - and also, in those days the proportion of money that was lent relative to income was less than it is now! So for us, it WAS almost 'home owners going bankrupt'!

So true!

I've experienced two recessions and read about previous ones. None of the experts ever got it right (otherwise there wouldn't have been recessions). Because of globalisation and bad banking practises, a car worker not being able to pay his mortgage in Detroit can bring down the whole world.

I read of 75% unemployment in Greece this morning, Spain belongs to the same eurozone club, how on earth can anyone predict what is going to happen next?

The prospect of 75% unemployment anywhere in the 'civilised' world is truly appalling! One can only hope that it is an exaggeration