Hooray! 
The bank’s equity in my home is now ZERO!
Once I get the certificate of title back from the bank I’ll really feel that it’s all mine.
Wow! Congratulations!
Cool! We’re looking forward to doing the same this year.
That’s our goal in the next two years - congrats and good job!
Congrats!!!
Next February will be my last mortgage payment. But I’m thinking of getting a home loan to pay for some needed improvements, so if I do it I won’t be completely off the hook for a while yet.
Congratulations! Yay! Paying off debt rocks!
Not quite the same, but we recently refinanced our house to pay off the credit cards. The first mortgage was nearly paid off (wasn’t much to start with; cheap property and we already owned half), and the house had nearly tripled in value according to the Fair Market Value on our property tax statements. Got it appraised and it turned out that the value was actually about quadrupled. (Sweet!) We borrowed only about 30% of that and plan to make extra payments.
Dropped about 10 percentage points in interest, and cut our monthly payments to about 30% of what they were previously. Niiiice.
Good to have that monkey off our backs. We’re committed to paying the remaining card off monthly if we do use it, and that sparingly. Plus Mr. S is happy about the increased value, cause he’s been busting his hump building and fixing up the place for about 20 years. A lot of that credit card debt was lumber & stuff.
We didn’t get rid of our debt, but at least now it’s “good” debt. And we’ve changed our spots so we don’t get into that mess again.
Feels pretty good.
Congratulations Cunctator!
Now, if I can be so rude, would you mind sharing with us how long it took you to pay it off? Any tips etc?
Nice. Very nice. pops the champagne
Good for you! It must feel great!
I bought my current place in January 2001. So I’ve had this mortgage for a bit over five years.
Any tips? Just a few obvious ones:
- whenever you build up a some spare cash surplus, throw it at the mortgage;
- if you get a pay rise, make sure you increase your mortgage repayments at the same time;
- if interest rates fall (as they did several times during my mortgage) and the bank tells you that your repayments have fallen too, **don’t ** accept it. Continue to pay what you’re currently paying.
Thanks for the tips and again, well done.
Hey it’s just like being a teenager again right? I mean come on, when’s the last time you had FREE rent!!
Only except THIS time it’s better cuz’ you don’t have the hassle of Mom & Pops bringing you down man!!
One tip for you. Don’t finalise the loan or get a clearance certificate. By keeping the mortgage open you are able to borrow the full value again without paying Stamp Duty. An investment advisor pointed that out to me after I had cleared mine and was investing in rental properties. Having your name on title is only important when you want to sell the property and you can lodge a form to do it whenever you like.
YAY for you!
We never plan on paying off ours as the tax deduction is really nice.
Woohoo! That is huge. Congratulations.
Wow, that’s a pretty quick paydown – four years? My understanding is that the property market in Sydney has skyrocketed, so you’re sitting in the catbird seat, as we say here. Must be great, even accounting for that weird feeling at the end of the month when you feel like you ought to be sending a check someplace. Bravo!
I’m thinking of maybe doubling my mortgage payments. Under $74,000 to go…
Congratulations!
Congratulations! We’re just about to take on a mortgage for the first time (together).
Congrats! My parents are about finishing with the mortgage on our house, also bought in 2001. Its value has shot up some 60% while they were paying it off :eek: Good thing we got in in time.