One is six to be paying off mortgage at 65 – Mortgage Strategy (2024)

One in six people – 15% – expect to be paying off their mortgage over the age of 65, shows research from Hargreaves Lansdown.

This compares to 18% of survey participants answering likewise in 2020, despite 2.9 million people having taken out a mortgage holiday during the pandemic.

Hargreaves Lansdown personal finance analyst Sarah Coles points out that, “this is likely to be because when payments restarted, mortgage companies tended to increase monthly payments instead of extending the mortgage as a default, and it seems borrowers have accepted these bigger bills rather than paying their mortgage for longer.”

And of those aged 55 or over who still have a mortgage of the 2,000 people asked in Hargreaves Lansdown’s latest survey, 19% anticipate paying off their mortgage over the age of 70 and 5% believe they’ll never repay their mortgage in full.

In 2020, the responses read as 21% and 5%.

While the average age borrowers expect to pay off their mortgage is 59, the number of survey participants who have no idea when they will pay it off at all stood at 16%. In 2019, 9% of those asked didn’t know and in 2020, 11% gave this answer.

Coles says: “This owes something to the fact that mortgage terms are increasing, so borrowers aren’t counting down the days.”

She adds: “Increasing uncertainties in life also mean we don’t always know whether we’ll need to borrow more as we go along. Some of this will have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

“However, we need to keep on top of when the mortgage is due to be repaid, so we can build our broader financial plans around it.”

The survey also shows that the majority of survey participants who have already retired own their home outright – 74%, in fact, while 6% still have a mortgage.

In both 2019 and 2020, these numbers stood at 72% and 6%.