Remortgage advice please

darkovo

My details:
40K mortgage 23 year left;
Currently with Alliance & Leicester on a Repayment Discounted Mortgage;
I can pay approx £350 per month into a mortgage.

I'm very tempted with the 10 year fixed rate Woolwich 4.67% & a different 5 year fixed at a similar rate, I know the rate can go down but at least I'll know where I am for 5/10 years.

The thing that puts me off with other 2 year mortgages are the fees you have to pay every time you want to switch mortgages, £250 or more will be saved each few years so be better in the short term.

I have for the last 2 times done 2 year repayment mortgages so may do that again though.

I'm not sure what to do and if there's a good 2 year or more deal with preferably daily interest calculated out there, please let me know.

Has anyone any advice please?

Thanks

Barney088

I guess, although can't guarantee that you could pay £350 a month and nearly clear that mortgage in 10 years on that rate. There is a long thread on a similar topic, do I do ten years or less.

Ultimately that one boiled down to no, tying in for 10 years was not the best, they were a first time buyer I think.

Your situation will command what option you go for and with such a small mortgage you'll really need a fee free deal, what ever year 2,5,10 you fix for to make it worth while.

As always, getting a broker to talk you through the options and discuss you and your circumstances in detail would be worth a trip. They should take you through a process that gets you talking about where you want to be in 3/7/10 years.

This will help clear the fog a little I hope.

Good luck

darkovo

Yea I will see an Independant Advisor, it's good to get other peoples views and arm myself with ideas though.

I didn't mean I wanted to pay the mortgage off in 10 years but the more the better! Thinking about it I'll probably want to move house in less than 5 years anyway so this could mess up mortgage rate/admin fees etc too?

Talking about Financial Advisors, how do I check they are independant so more liable to give me the best advice & also shouldn't cost me much if I went with their deal?

Thanks for the quick reply.

herbiesjp

When you see a mortgage adviser they should give you an Initial Disclosure Document and this should disclose apart from other things:

1) What fees they charge
2) What type of adviser they are i.e. tied or whole of market etc.

However whole of market doe not necessarily mean every lender, so the best question to ask would be, can you source the best mortgage for me today from every lender in the market.

Please note that a few lenders do not deal with brokers i.e. YBS, HSBC, First Direct so you have to source these yourself.

AndrewSmith

Mortgage advisor hat off for a moment : My own personal opinion is a 10 year fixed rate is too long. No-one can predict what will happen in this time and it id an awfully long time to be fixing a rate for.

silvercar

I fixed at 8.65% in January 1993 on an 8 year fix, seemed a good rate at the time, we had just taken on a BIG mortgage and wanted the security of knowing that payments wouldn't increase.

We lost out on that rate for about 5 of the 8 years. After 3 years we dropped to one salary and couldn't afford to pay the redemption penalty and get a new mortgage as at that time our salary multiples were too low. By the time we could have moved the mortgage there was only 2 years left on the fixed rate so it didn't make sense to move it.

10 years is a long time!

QuidProQuo

I am also with Alliance & Leicester on a Repayment Discounted Mortgage which ends in August and am keeping tabs on rates at the moment

I've pretty much decided I want to go for a five year fix and over the last three months, of the comparisons I had done, it remained cheaper to stay with the A & L, although I haven't done a comparison for over a month now.

Also I hadn't considered the fact that A & L charge £295 admin fee to repay the mortgage (or if you argue you might get it reduced to £150).

My mortgage is quite a bit bigger than yours so you need to calculate it for yourself but just thought I would mention this fee in case you didn't know.

Read more here

darkovo

Thanks for the replies, yes I'll have to see what they try to charge me for "Admin" costs and see if I can get it reduced, good link to that other thread.

I'm hunting for an advisor tomorrow.

kenshaz

read Martins article on mortgages

QuidProQuo

I've just done a quick check and the best deal for me at the moment is not A & L but Portmans 5 year fee free remortgage at 4.79%.

This includes for paying A & L the full £295 admin fee

Check their website here

Not saying this is the best available but I always like to shop around myself, as kenshaz stated you should read Martins article and get some 'free' advice from London & Country.