Boomer simply means a person born in the baby boom, it is not necessarily a pejorative in the same way millennial isn't.
The thing is that whilst mortgage interest rates are a lot smaller now, that doesn't always mean that they are more affordable.
In 1982 when mortgage rates were 10% the average pay was £6,600 and the average home was £24,000. To make the maths easier we'll assume £0 tax but also £0 deposit.
That would mean that the interest payment for the year would average at £200 a month from £550 pay.
Land Registry suggests that average house prices are £270,000 (others say £300,000, but we'll go with the lower value) whilst average pay is £39,000. Assuming the same £0 tax and deposit, at 5.5% interest is £1,240 from £3,250 of pay
That's not easy to compare so if we factor to £200 from £1,240 for the interest payments that's pay of £525 so around £25 (5%) less pay (1982 prices) to cover the interest payments and yet the rate of interest is noticeable lower now than then (10% then vs 5.5%).
Only that's not the only difference, AI suggests that in 1982 for a house in the West Midlands for the average house price it would be a 3 bed semi-detached house whilst now the average would likely get you a 2 bed terraced house.
Also a 10% deposit of a home would be £2,400 (36.36% of average pay) in 1982 vs £27,000 (71.05% of average pay) for 10% now but still £13,500 (35.52% of average pay) making it harder to save up the 10% deposit and just as hard to save for a 5% deposit (but then higher monthly payments) in the first place.
As such, whilst interest rates were high and lower deposits are an option now, due to other factors it's still likely harder now than it was and it's likely that the size of home is also likely to be smaller.
One factor - at least until the mid 1970s - that kept house prices low was the rationing of finance (=mortgages). With very few exceptions, only Building Societies (then mutuals of course) offered mortgages and these were funded only from deposits. Ass far as I know, no mutual borrowed on the market. As a result, mortgages were rationed (to the available deposits) so, from first hand experience in those times to obtain the clearance to get a mortgage you had to fulfil the following conditions -
Have historically saved with the Building Society for a number of years (I think it was either 5 or 7 years).
Have savings that were around 5 percent of the application value
Be a married couple, or have evidence that you were about to be so.
Limit of 3 times the man's annual salary.if your wife worked (probably had to be salaried) you got in addition 1/2 of hers.
Having obtained that clearance, you then were entitled to apply for a mortgage, but you cloud only do this when mortgages were 'released'. This usually happened on the 1st of the month, and a finite amount of money was available. You had to physivcally go into the Building Societies offices on the 1st of the month to make your app[lication (there was often a long queue!) you couldn't say 'I want a mortgage next time it's released. At least, that's how it worked with Northampton & midlands Building Society (eventually by mergers bacema Nationwide). Generally, a town only had the offices of the local building society and maybe one other nearby one - Northampton also had a Bedford Building Society office.
Because I was single* I was precluded from having a mortgage but in some restricted cases one could convince the local council to lend you the money, which is what I did (for reasons I won't elaborate on) these were generally about half or one percent above Building Society rates of interest.
* I have several times heard Michael Howard's wife complain on radio programmes that 'she couldn't get a mortgage because she was a woman'. She coudn't because she was single, and the same applied to men.
What might also be worth mentioning is a comparison between an average house bought in 1974 and one now. The former would certainly not have the double glazing now normal. Gas central heating was only possible once towns were connected to the North Sea Gas grid; as an example of why this had to be is our local gasworks couldn't keep up with the demand for cooking gas on Christmas Day, when the gas flame in our oven was hardly visible and cooking the joint took most of the day.
Also, 'relief' arrived quite literally the next year in 1983, with MIRAS (Mortagage Interest Relief At Source) whereby motgage interest was subject to tax relief.
Everyone who mentions higher interest rates in the past, neglects to mention this substantial perk throughout most of the 80s and 90s.
I have an idea that it started before that and 1983 might possibly have been when it finished. It was only applied to mortgages up to £30,000. As you say, the result was that you paid the Building Society the net amount after-tax relief. However, I think I'm right in saying it only applied to the interest element of mortgages, so at the start (almost all interest payments) it was the full amount, dwindling down as the proportion of capital repayment to interest charge increased to almost zero in th last years. This was the advantage of those 'endowment' mortgages of the time, where you took out an interest only mortgage and a policy into which you paid monthly and which. when your mortgage had to be paid off (i.e., the amount originally borrowed repaid) the cost of that was paid by the pay out from your investment. This meant that all of your mortgage repayments were free of tax, and that saving exceeded the cost off the investment ('endowment') , hope I've explained that understandably.
