Clottie's clear inference - that this "never-ever-sell-and-keep-on-remortgaging" strategy is absolute Mickey Mouse philosophising and resides in cloud cuckooland - is absolutely correct.
It bears no relationship whatever to circumstances in the real world, and makes as much sense as telling Ethiopians to ignore the reality that they are starving, and just keep on eating and everything will turn out ok !
The fact is that house values are currently dropping fairly fast and pretty much everywhere now, whereas until quite recently it was patchy. (I wish I could say otherwise because my wife inherited a detached cottage in a quarter acre of countryside a couple of weeks ago and we are looking at having to sell it just as fast as we can get it cleared out. Instead of taking our time and dragging the process out in the knowledge that its value will go up £10,000 or more over the next 6 months, we are pretty sure we are going to be watching its value dropping by a similar amount, and nobody knows for how long. We might have to rent it out for a few years.)
The latest figures do not inspire any confidence in any remortgaging strategy. And, unless you bought the property some time back, you will probably not have SCOPE to remortgage anyway. Your borrowing is increasing against a dropping value ! The ability to incur further debt like that to convince yourself you are a property tycoon runs out sooner or later. And 6 years is a long time to scrape by if we have seen the start of the downturn of the so-called 6-year cycle.
Even assuming that you have elbow room to remortgage, you then need to find a lender who actually has the money available and is willing to send it your way.
And in any case, once your income from the property is not meeting your mortgage interest and other outgoings, you may have no decision to take because you will more than likely be forced to sell it, whether or not an ex-double glazing salesman tells you it is not a good strategy.
The strategy is nothing whatever to do with property profits, it is simply about trying to live off ever-increasing debt. And as always with such a policy, reality will catch up with you sooner or later, and in the current climate almost certainly sooner.
LAND PLANNING ASSOCIATES
Planning Law Consultants & Planning Appeals Specialists
www.landplanning.org.ukemail: info@landplanning.org.uk