A shared appreciation mortgage or SAM is a mortgage in which the lender agrees to receive some or all of the repayment in the form of a share of the increase in value (the appreciation) of the property. In the UK A shared appreciation mortgage is a mortgage arranged as a form of equity release. The lender loans the borrowers a capital sum in return for a share of the future increase in the value of the property. The borrowers retain the right to live in the property until death. Shared appreciation mortgages sold between 1996–1998 have not always turned out to be products beneficial to the borrowers who took them out. Sales and marketing About 12,000 shared appreciation mortgages were sold by Bank of Scotland between November 1996 and February 1998, and about 3,000 were sold by Barclays Bank between May and August 1998. They were sold by Bank of Scotland through financial advisers and mortgage brokers, and by Barclays directly to the borrowers. Barclays Bank loaned a total of £100m of shared appreciation mortgages, and so the average size of each of their loans would have been about £33,333. Barclays' booklet on shared appreciation mortgages says that they were "specially designed for the needs and lifestyles of the mature homeowner... aged 45 or over and... property worth over £60,000." They were mostly aimed at people aged 65 and over, and marketed as ideal for people who had paid off their mortgage, allowing them to release cash tied up in their home without having to sell up. In 2014, nearly half of the shared appreciation mortgages were still active. The loan and the repayment The lender of a shared appreciation mortgage lent a sum of money up to a maximum of 25% of the value of the property. The borrower retained ownership of the property and no repayments were made until the property was sold or the borrower died. At that time the repayment was the original amount borrowed plus a share of the increase in the value of the property. The lender's percentage share was three times the percentage of the value of the property that was originally borrowed. Therefore if the original loan was 25% of the value of the property, the share of the increase in the value would have been 75%. For the purpose of this calculation, the final value of the property was not