The discussion in the comment section after my Monday post this week focused a lot on mortgage rate history.  It prompted me to find this graph on 30-year fixed standard mortgages from 1971-2025.  

I remember the peak in 1981 as we moved that year for my Dad’s job and my parents got a 16% mortgage for our new house.  Bad timing. It was quite a financial strain for our family until they were able to refinance to a much lower rate after about 4-5 years. 

The green bars I added are some key dates in our own history with mortgages.  

The first green line in 1990 is when we got married and bought a small condo (for $24K!).   I think our mortgage rate was about 9%.  We probably wouldn’t have even qualified for that, but it was the era of “assumable” mortgages.  If the seller had a mortgage, the buyer just took over for them.  Strange to think about those now.

The second green line in 1993 was when we bought our first single-family house.  A nice, three bedroom, 1800 sqf split- level that was only 7 years old.  Our rate was about 7% at this point, which we felt good about because it was lower than rates had been in some time.   

Our next house – the first one we had built – was in 2000.  It was a custom-built 3,500 sqf house on a nice cul-de-sac with a lot of families.  Rates were going up for the whole year we designed & built the house.  We ended up at 8% and kept the house for 9 years – frequently doing no-cost refinancing over that time.

We moved in our current house in 2009.  On Halloween Day.  We put a lot of cash into the purchase, but still had a mortgage at about 6%.  Our rate was about 1pp higher than the chart as we rolled all the closing costs into the rate.  We only had the mortgage for about 18 months before we paid it off in 2011. 

In the years after our last mortgage payment, rates continued to fall.  They fell to 2.75% nationally in November of 2021.  At that point, we were long out of the mortgage game.  I suppose we could have put a mortgage back on the house and invested the proceeds, but that’s isn’t something we ever even considered.  

What are some of the notable milestones in your home / mortgage journey? 

Image: Pixabay