Forty-year mortgages: life sentence or life raft?

It can dramatically cut monthly repayments – but there’s one rather big catchNew figures suggest that the traditional 25-year mortgage is becoming a thing of the past. More than half (51%) of those on sale have a standard maximum term of up to 40 years, according to the financial data website Moneyfacts – up from 36% in 2014. But is the 40-year mortgage a nifty way for desperate buyers to get on to the housing ladder – or a financial life sentence?High house prices, escal