Linda O’Brien lives with her husband Robert and their children, 10-year old Ollie and eight-year-old Daisy, at Grenagh in north Cork.
She is one of thousands of mortgage holders who is hoping today’s interest rates increase will be the last.
The couple bought their house 15 years ago at the height of the boom and have spent the time since then turning it into a home.
For most of that time, they have enjoyed the cushion of low interest rates on a tracker mortgage.
Those pre-bust days were different times. Money was cheap, mortgages were being given out two-a-penny and the supply of houses and apartments was relatively plentiful.
“We bought when we were really young,” Ms O’Brien recalls.
“We were handed the mortgage, like you’d buy a handbag. So that was 2007.”
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Then the financial crash came and people’s circumstances changed rapidly and pretty drastically.
The O’Briens were no different.
“Only in the last year we have got out of negative equity,” she said.
“We absolutely adore where we live. We adore our neighbours. We’re really, really happy with it, but that negative equity is always in the back of our minds.”
Throughout this time, Linda and Robert were both working full-time. There was a degree of juggling when Ollie and Daisy came along but – even through the pandemic – their tracker mortgage, with its low or zero interest rate, provided them with certainty and ensured their mortgage repayments were manageable.
Read more: Interest rates rise again – what does it mean?
In 2021, Ms O’Brien was made redundant from her job in retail, where she had worked for 12 years.
She went back to education, first part-time and, just over a month ago, full-time.
She is now studying for a social science youth and community degree at University College Cork.
Unfortunately, her return to full-time education coincided with the beginning of a series of interest rate rises by the European Central Bank. And with that, Linda and Robert’s mortgage repayments began to increase too.
This afternoon, Linda reflected on her third interest rate increase in less than four months.
“It’s gone up by 2% since July, which is a massive hike,” she said.
“In monetary terms, it’s about €200 (per month). That impacts us, especially with the rise of inflation at the moment. It’s already a squeeze.
“I never thought I’d be the kind of person to think of ‘what are we spending on the weekly shopping? where am I driving to? what social activities do we have? what do we have to say no to?’ That, at the moment, is where the disposable income is really, really being pulled back.
“It’s really tough. At the moment, with one person working full-time, my husband is trying to work all the overtime he can. That, for him, takes away family time and puts a different mental pressure on him. Then you have me on the other side, trying to go to college, (doing) volunteering, with two kids and activities.”
Linda’s situation is similar to thousands of others with mortgages on tracker and variable rates. They will be hoping today’s interest rate increase will be the last, for a while at least.
Unfortunately, there is already speculation of a further hike in a just over a month’s time.
Interest rates increase: ‘It’s already a squeeze’
Source: Viral Trends Report
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