A VANISHED, TRADITION

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 75, 21 December 1928, Page 21

A VANISHED, TRADITION

NO MORE SHAME IN THE MORTGAGE

Once upon a time the mortgage was a stain on the family honour —“Mortgages were never discussed in public, and their owners shuddered about them in private. The books and plays of fifty years ago reflected the horror with which the mortgage was regarded, and mortgagees were always villains who demanded the beautiful golden-haired daughter on the date of maturity or threatened to move the family heirlooms into the street.” But, continues a statement made by the National Association of Heal Estate Boards in an article in the New York “Sun,” “times have changed and the mortgage should not be looked on now as the first step toward the poorhouse, for mortgages are no longer held by heartless villains who foreclose on the stroke of twelve o'clock and evict the family into a snow-storm.” It was pointed out that a mortgage is simply “a document pledging the security of a property, given by its owner to a person or organisation advancing money to the owner.” Most first mortgages are” undertaken in connection with buying or building a home,'and sometimes the mortgage is used by a person with a paid-for home in order to raise funds for some special purpose. As we read further:

Very few businesses to-day can go very far without credit. The man who can command credit to-day can command the modern world, and the man who can secure a mortgage is a man who can secure credit. The very fact that he can obtain a mortgage means that he has . something-behind him.

For a prospective home-buyer or builder a mortgage is a means of acquiring a home that could not be secured in any . other way unless the prospective, buyer or guilder could pay all cash, and statistics show that few homes are purchased by complete cash payments.. For the man with a little money to invest the mortgage is a good place in which to’ put his savings. Foreclosures are unbelievably few compared to the vast sums loaned in mortgages. The interests lending money in this field rely on what is known as good-will for their very existence. Competition is keen, there is an adequate flow of capital for mortgage purposes, and the mortgage interests can not secure public good-will by foreclosing on the stroke of twelve o’clock. Therefore, every consideration is given to mortgage borrowers, and foreclosure is resorted to only when all else fails.