Anyone consider getting a mortgage in retirement?

[corn18]

We paid off our current house last year. Just wanted to see what that felt like. It was nice, I guess. But now we are moving to our initial retirement location and building a house. Should be able to retire in 2 years. Sure would be nice to have that cash vs. locked up in a house. Luckily I got a HELOC for no particular reason. It will come in handy.

I think if we can get a 30 year below 3.5%, we will get a conforming loan on the new house and keep it.

[karen1972]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NotYourAverageJones We have been tossing around the idea of taking out a partial mortgage or use some cash to either buy new or build our home before we retire end of 2021. We still aren't 100% sure where we are gonna live when we repatriate back from overseas. But it's looking more like Cary/Apex NC area where the homes are still reasonably priced. The upside is my DH could work "OMY" and we could pay cash for a home and not have to draw off any of the assets we have earmarked for our fun spending. But the downside is we have to stay here "OMY" and we are not sure that it is really worth it to us after (what will be) an already long 13 years away. So not sure what we will do right now, but a mortgage isn't off the table and we have "x$" budgeted in our plan anyway for housing expense each year, because you still need a place to live. Guess you just have to weigh the pros and cons of taking on a mortgage or not. And the reality is, it doesn't really matter what anyone else would or could do because only you can decide what works best for your future.

Hope you factored in the skyrocketing increases in Apex/Cary with your OMY plan. Its all anyone around here complains about, the "northerners" have taken over Cary and with their accumulated wealth are just blowing up the housing market. We just couldn't justify paying $200k for the same house so ended up in Brier Creek and why I took out the mortgage as it was buy now or pay 10% YoY housing price increase waiting for me to leverage out enough cash.

[pacergal]

We paid off our mortgage before retirement, then had several big expenses come up at once so we did a heloc, rather than pull from investments. Last year when rates went way down, we refinanced to a low 3% rate 15 year mortgage, paid off the heloc. Our pensions cover it in our monthly spending and we didn't need to take out of our savings.
The mortgage is less than half of the worth of the house, so its not a big financial burden.
The mortgage question is more about emotions than finances, but thats my opinion.

[pacergal]

We paid off our mortgage before retirement, then had several big expenses come up at once so we did a heloc, rather than pull from investments. Last year when rates went way down, we refinanced to a low 3% rate 15 year mortgage, paid off the heloc. Our pensions cover it in our monthly spending and we didn't need to take out of our savings.
The mortgage is less than half of the worth of the house, so its not a big financial burden.
The mortgage question is more about emotions than finances, but thats my opinion.

[SumDay]

We downsized ~5 years ago, and put down ~70% and took out a small mortgage for the rest.

We were still working, and applied for a HELOC at our local bank, just so we'd have it in case of a serious market downfall. It's much easier to get a mortgage or HELOC if you have W-2's, which we don't now.

[ncbill]

I'd consider a HELOC but would not carry a mortgage into retirement based on what I've seen.

The relative I buried a year ago had a mortgage and HELOC and that made for a very mean retirement for them after unexpectedly being laid off age 60...they had to cash in their pension to make it to SS at age 62, dying about a decade later.