aarrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhh

Personally I think that would be a massive gamble.

I agree that the media have played a large part in this and don't seem to be getting bored of it either.

Have a chat with your existing lender to see if it is their policy to offer further deals at the end of your fixed rate. Whilst this policy might change (another whatif!) it might put your mind at ease. Worst case scenario is it will go to their svr or whatever you offer says.

You might not get sufficient money for the house in this climate or even sell before the fixed rate ends and you would have to pay for a HIP to get it on the market so all in all, and if it were me, I would sit tight and try to enjoy my home.

Some of the posts on here are pretty alarmist, reactionary and sensational and can be taken with a large pinch of salt...we have to keep our head whilst those around us etc etc

Good luck

I have been in a similar situation over recent months - watching mortgage deals dry up and rates rise whilst being too far away from our remortgage date to do anything about it! I wondered at one point whether jumping ship early to lock into a new deal might be worthwhile, but I quickly realised there are a number of factors which make this a bad idea:

- You would have to pay hefty fees for a decent deal
- You wouldn't see a return on investment on the product fees you paid on your last deal
- You wouldn't find a rate as low as your current one, so your payments would increase. For every month left on your original deal, you would pay £xx more than you would have done if you hadn't changed, meaning that's effectively an extra 'fee' incurred by the switch
- All these costs are in addition to the ERC which is also hefty
- Most lenders allow you to secure a deal up to 6 months in advance of the date you need to remortgage. This means it's not the rate in June you need to be concerned about, but the rate in December. Whilst rates are increasing, the chances of them rocketing so high in the next 6 months to make all the above cost worthwhile are very slim.

Finally, there is so much conflicting information about the future, most of it bad - but not everybody thinks rates are going to keep going up and up, others think they may stabilise or even start to come back down. So you could actually find by the time your deal runs out the rates are better than they are today - think how you'd feel if you'd jumped ship now only to find in June that you were locked into an even worse deal! Ok, perhaps the chances of this are slim, but it's another reason to not get too worried about it all.

Oh and one final point - you've got a year until you start a new deal. If you can overpay on your current deal, use the opportunity while you still have a reasonable rate to throw as much money as you can at it, as this will reduce the amount of interest you owe and help reduce any increase in monthly payments when the time comes. If you can't overpay then save as hard as you can so you can pay it all in one lump in June instead.

Agree with izzy this is old news the writing has been on the wall for a long time, housepricecrash forum started back in 2004, IMF have been saying property 35% over valued for as far back as I can remember. I think the media are reporting what they see and hear I dont want censorship I want the truth, Robert Preston's blog is a good place to start.

But just to warn you its going to get a lot worse, this may come as a shock to you but as izzy says forarmed is forwarned. AS for rates you will have to sit tight Im afraid, may be you could get a lodger to help with the payments.