Remortgage and negative equity

drumragh

My 2 year interest only deal expires in December.

I currently have a tracker mortgage with Halifax. The mortgage is £167k and the value of the house is probably around 150k. At one stage house was worth 225k.

I have no real savings. I have good credit, never missed payments etc.

Just concerned that wount be fit to get a new deal.

what is my best step forward

lisyloo

You won't be able to get a remortgage.
You will be stuck with the Halifax.

Chekc, but most lenders won't allow you to apply for a new deal with them until 3 months beforehand, so you will have to wait until then.

In the meantime, I suggest you start budgetting as you are likely to face an increase.

I suggest you start with a spreadsheet and start recording what you spend
e.g. food, gas, electricity, tv licence, phone, water, sky, mobile, internet, petrol, car maintenance, car insurance, house insurance, entertainment, presents, holidays, health (optical and dental), pension, insurance(s), mortgage etc.
In order to make any headway you must know where all you money is going NOW.
Once you know that then you can look at which areas you might be able to economise on by either cutting back consumption or finding better deals.

Prudent

Are you sure about the house value?

I have just had my house valued by three estate agents. Each gave me the same figure of £130 -140K, but propbaly £135K very realistic. I asked all how much it would have achieved last year and they all said about £10k more.

The drop on your seems huge.

minimike2

Its best to ask the Halifax what thier index values it at, as this will determine any new deal they can offer you and take it from there.

drumragh

Thanks people

The location is Northern Ireland, we have had rapid changes in the market here. there have been huge drops in the last year. Not sure what market value would have been but one next door was sold for 225k at its peak

UK007BullDog

Well, before you tell the mortgage company what it is I would tell them its worth at least £210K priced conservatively and pretend total ignorance. Then let them get it surveyed and I bet it is not that bad, then you would be OK to remortgage.

Dont be that negative! Be Happy!!!

Alternatively get some estate agents around to give you their opinions/guesses.

beecher

drumragh, do you have an online account with Halifax? If so you can check the value Halifax has for your house - you might be suprised how high it is. I wouldn't get over £120,000 for my flat now, after a high of £140,000, but the Halifax has it valued as £145,000, and has only dropped £3,000 in the last few months.

Keep an eye on http://www.halifax.co.uk/mortgages/newdeal.asp and you can calculate how much the new deals will cost you. At the moment their deals have to complete by the end of November, so you've probably got a month to wait til you can get a new one.

keeno

drumragh I live in N.Ireland also

I had a mortgage with Bank of Scotland and I have just remortgaged with the Halifax, without even doing a survey they valued my house at £210,000 there is absolutly no way it is worth that in the current market.

mpsavuk

UK007BullDog wrote: »

Well, before you tell the mortgage company what it is I would tell them its worth at least £210K priced conservatively and pretend total ignorance. Then let them get it surveyed and I bet it is not that bad, then you would be OK to remortgage.

Yeah, like the surveyor is really going to be that stupid!

keeno

mpsavuk wrote: »

Yeah, like the surveyor is really going to be that stupid!

Thats assuming that the house will even be surveyed, mine wasnt, so they could get away with it.

stoke_bishop

mpsavuk wrote: »

Yeah, like the surveyor is really going to be that stupid!

This is not so far from the truth actually.
Surveyors will tend to go with what you tell them unless it's clearly out of the range that they would expect according to the local market.

They tend to be quite slow to react to changes in market conditions.