Five Common Misconceptions About Equity Release
Will Equity Release Keep You Out of Debt?
When you are getting older, the prospect of having to sell your home and move into a retirement residence can seem daunting. With equity release products like lifetime mortgages, you can keep living in your own home while still enjoying all the benefits of retirement. Equity release is not for everyone – there are some misconceptions about releasing equity UK.
Equity release won’t affect your entitlement to means-tested benefits such as the pension credit, housing benefit and council tax reduction. This is because those benefits are based on your current income and savings.
Eligible equity release products will not affect the inheritance rights of any other beneficiaries, including children or grandchildren.
Equity release is designed to be a last resort if all of your financial options have been exhausted so you can live out the rest of your life in dignity at home with loved ones around you. It’s better than selling up for less than what it could be worth now, paying an extortionate amount upfront in fees that go towards lending companies rather than providing funding for care later on, or continuing to pay high interest rates from credit cards . Equity release products provide peace-of-mind because they’re regulated by both central and local governments across the UK.
The equity release product you choose will depend on your needs and circumstances. It’s important to find the right one for you that meets those requirements in order to get the best value from it.
Equity release is only available to homeowners who are over 55 and have a significant amount of equity in their property. Actually, eligible customers can be as young as 50 and still have access to these products.
Equity release is a popular product with over 80,000 people choosing this way of financing their retirement in the last year alone.
You are not obliged to sell your home when you equity release it: in fact, for many people, their property is a major asset that they need to live on while they’re retired. In this case, equity release can be a sensible way of turning what would otherwise be an illiquid investment into cash without having to move house or put up with estate agency fees. As long as the value of your family home remains higher than the balance owed under any loans taken out against it at retirement then there’s no reason why you should have either to sell or remortgage during life.