Who's buying which mortgage?

Repayment mortgages are by far the most common home loans in the UK, with 65 per cent of households owning them.

A survey providing a snapshot of the nation's finances between July 2006 and June 2007 reveals endowment mortgages were the next most popular with 14 per cent of the households having one.

The Office for National Statistics' (ONS) Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) found repayment mortgages were most popular with single people and married couples with young children.

Endowment mortgages, meanwhile, proved most common within lone-parent households with non-dependent children.

Offset mortgages, where current or savings accounts are balanced against the amount owed on a mortgage, accounted for between five and seven per cent of repayment mortgages, the WAS found.

And eight per cent of all households, the ONS survey revealed, had interest-only mortgages with no linked investment. This kind of mortgage was most popular with households with married or cohabiting couples over state pension age without children.

The survey showed seven per cent of households had mortgages which contained a mix of both repayment and endowment mortgages. Couples who were married or living together and who had dependent children were most likely to go for this option.

The WAS also found only eight per cent of respondents owned any real estate aside from their family home and these were generally UK properties as opposed to overseas.

The report said: "Residents of the south-east of England were the most likely to own property other than a family home, at 11 per cent, compared with just five per cent of residents in the north-east and six per cent in the north-west and West Midlands."