Bistromathics

[caramel_betty]

Stolen from a webpage, Douglas Adams opined thusly about money and restaurants:Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe

Comments

[caramel_betty]

It's specifically a pain in the arse because you don't know what the interest rates will be, on top of all the crazy "How much you pay off, and how much the interest is" crap

[adelpha]

I've not really done much (ie, any) research into buying a house, so I've never figured out the advantage of getting a leasehold. I'm assuming there is one..?

[samholloway]

Give me a shout if you need any of the calculations explaining. The software that I write for a living handles all sorts of financial instruments, and deals that look like mortgages are one of the simplest.

It's not *that* complicated. For a repayment mortgage, you pay off exactly P/n of your capital each month (P is your total capital at the start of the mortage, n is the number of months in your term). Then you each month additionally pay off the interest accrued on the balance owing over that month.

What does complicate things is that mortgages traditionally had their interest calculated annually, and some providers still do this. This means that your capital repayments over the course of a year don't actually take effect until the end of the year. Hence you really should try to avoid these.

I can also thoroughly recommended talking to independent mortgage brokers London & Count(r)y (I can never remember whether it's County or Country) as they've been excellent for me both times I've remortgaged. They also have some handy

[caramel_betty]

Oh, the particular problem here is that were I to buy it as is, the number of mortgages I can get is vastly reduced, which means comparing like with unlike.