Re:Ask HN: What's the most valuable thing you can learn in a...
by jermaustin1 on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @06:58AM
(#21583106)
These are still around and pushed pretty heavily, but they are primarily for "Buy to Let" mortgages in my research. And offer an astounding TERRIBLE rate on top of the astoundingly terrible concept.
That said, the interest is a great write off for a landlord, especially if they are personally the originator of the loan to their holding company.
That's only one kind of mortgage though - for a while there were mortgages available in the UK where you only payed the interest on the principal but you also payed into a separate saving scheme with the idea that when the latter matured it would pay off the former.
No idea if these are still available, but for a while in the early 1990s you used to get a very hard sell on them - we had one for a five years or so. In reality they are a terrible idea as you are paying interest on a non-decreasing principal which is a shockingly bad idea and then there is the risk of the saving scheme performance as well.
Edit: Of course you got a hard sell on them as they were clearly a terrible idea from the borrowers perspective but were far more profitable than a normal mortgage for the lender.