RayC

Presumably all homeowners are therefore enemies of the proletariat and will need to be lined up against the wall and shot? Going to need a long wall. Someone had better ask the Chinese comrades if we can use theirs.

Fair enough.

Average rates are now +/-7.5%. Are those who budgeted for 6% fools?

I imagine that most people thinking of taking out a six-figure loan give it a bit of thought. Likewise, for those lending such amounts Really? The average mortgage rate in mid-2019 was 4%; it is now nearly 8% with further increases possible. With no sign of COVID or the Ukraine war, you would have argued in mid-2019 that the average mortgage rate would double in 3 years? So by this simple arithmetic progression we should expect interest rates to rise and revert to the mean of 8% in a year's time? And then what, a period of stability at 8%? A reverse trend down to what? I think if managing monetary policy was that simple, governments and central banks would have realised it by now. Yes at some point, interest rates were bound to rise. However, on its' own that knowledge is fairly useless. The questions were when and by how much? You forget the group in the middle which imo are the majority. What about those who had budgeted carefully and had funds to cover emegencies and, say, a 50% rise in interest rates? And what if these individuals had carefully budgeted that they could still afford to have a 2-week holiday each year, go out once a week, buy the odd gadget every couple of years but who now find that having redirected all their funds that they were spending on this less than extravagant lifestyle, they are still not able to meet their mortgage repayments; their problems are entirely self-inflicted?