Marathon mortgage: could a 35-year loan solve your house price problem?

Or are we simply storing up trouble for the future, asks Kate Hughes

Would-be buyers in their mid-thirties are now reaching for loans they could still be paying long after they stop earning (PA)

Once upon a time, if we were lucky enough, we bought a first home in our twenties with a 20- or 25-year mortgage.

By the end of our working lives we would be clear of housing debts – just in time for our incomes to drop. Maybe, just maybe, there would be a golden decade when the debts were cleared and our earnings peaked. That all sounds like another country to most of today’s mortgage holders.

In fact, in a bid to overcome an average house price of just under £283,000 – up a breathtaking 11 per cent on last year despite a battery of economic assaults from the patchy pandemic recovery to runaway inflation – would-be buyers in their mid-30s are now reaching for loans they could still be paying long after they stop earning.