Word: holyhead
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...British economy has come to depend on people like 26-year-old Rebecca Holyhead. She and her boyfriend Dave are about to put down the deposit on their first house. It may not sound like much - a two-bedroom semi-detached that used to be public housing, on the outer fringe of London and far from the Tube - but it's costing them a heady ?150,000, more than three times their combined annual salaries. (She's a nuclear safety engineer; he works in local government. Their parents are pitching in on the deposit.) Though...
...Just ask Holyhead. She has paid rent of ?750 a month for a one-and-half bedroom flat not far from her new house. Her variable-rate mortgage, on the other hand, will cost just ?500 a month as long as rates hold. Overall, Britons pay only 8% of their income on interest payments, compared to 15% in 1990 after rates had soared into the double-digits, triggering the big credit crunch. "There is no evidence of people having pain servicing their debts," says housing economist John Wriglesworth of Hometrack, "despite lenders being very generous with their lending policies...