Mortgage rates at 20% !!!!

   So ... this headline from July 1981 would be every homeowner's worst nightmare. Even if you'd paid off your house and had no mortgage, the value of your home would be catapulted into the void because people couldn't afford to pay those rates, ergo prices come crashing down. But let's assume that you did the craziest thing and bought a house with that rate in 1981 when this headline was taken. (The rate actually went higher that very year.)
   So imagine you were sitting around watching the Royal Wedding and decided you wanted to live English-style in Westmount.
   You might shop for a house like this, 18 Arlington which was on the market for $190,000 that year. (I'm presuming that it had been discounted by the panic rates. Prices peaked in 1987 and then crashed and stayed low until about 2000).
   So if you popped down your 10 percent down payment you'd be paying over $2,900 a month to pay off the house. But assuming you chose a variable rate, you'd soon be down to $1,400 per month as the rates went down to around 8% a couple of years later. The point being that buying with a variable rate mortgage when the lending rate is tumbling is a very nice thing