Depressed - stuck with my PRUDENT fixed rate mortgage!

marnstars

Is anyone else as depressed as me. In a rising market back in 2007, I came off my last fixed rate at 4.5% on to a five year fixed at 5.3%. Alas, colleagues at work are enjoying abismally low mortgage repayments based on taking the riskier trackers.

Who's risk has paid off now then! Some £500 a month better off on a £1200 mortgage!

How much of an ear would my building society have if I called them. They're surely paying less for thier money now! :mad:

uzubairu

Your building society will ask you to pay the Early Redemption Charge before letting you come of your deal, as you entered into a contract with them.

Stop listening to your work colleagues, 5.3% isn't that bad.
Obviously, compared to the ridiculously low rates at present, due to the economy being screwed, it does feel a bit galling for you.
They won't last forever.

You could do your sums and see if it would be financially beneficial to switch.

New trackers are not nearly as favourable, so taking out a tracker now may not give you quite the saving your colleagues are enjoying at present.

When they were paying more on their trackers than your 5.3% how did you feel?

You don't take out a fixed rate product to get the cheapest deal.
Usually, you do it because you need to know that your payments remain constant and will not be affected for a period of time.

That's why we took a fixed rate product.
We were able to budget more accurately because we knew exactly what the mortgage would be.
Currently happily overpaying, so that we can be mortgage free 15 years early. We have no regrets.

dunstonh

How much of an ear would my building society have if I called them.

Virtually none.

They're surely paying less for thier money now! :mad:

No they are not.

Heyman_2

If your house is greater than 75% LTV then you are unlikely to benefit at all by trying to get out of your mortgage, as current deals won't be much better for you.

Try to bear in mind that interest rates are pretty much as low as they can go, and no-one knows what will happen in the next 12 months. If rates start going on the rise, your work colleagues will be scrambling around trying to get a fixed rate themselves.

We're on a lifetime tracker, having come off a fixed rate and obviously at the moment it's great but we do have a high LTV. So the saved money is simply being put to one side to give us some options in the long term if/when rates start going up again - we're not really better off as a result. I think that's what most sensible people on Trackers will be doing - so chin up as the grass isn't always greener!!!

theartfullodger

Sigh! I've a 5.49% fixed for 3 year deal. Seemed like a good idea at the time so I went with it.. And I accept that I took the decision and it is ENTIRELY DOWN TO ME to accept the good-fortune should it turn out to have been a good deal (very unlikely...) and also to accept that if it turns out a bad deal then i live with it & don't winge...


We are adults (well, speaking personally sometimes..) with free-will and should surely have the *a*l*s to accept our own responsibilities...

Cheers!

Artful

puddy

yep,,, i took out a 10 YEAR fixed rate 2 years ago. its 4.98, someone at work was going on about how he is only paying about 100 quid for a huge mortgage, im paying 560pm. BUT i made the choice, i wanted security for all them years and if what people are saying is right, the latter half of my fixed rate, say the last 5 years, the rate may be what most people are paying anyway, once rates have gone back up,,, so im not grumbling too much

Plasticman

I'm on a 5 yr fixed rate. I've had a couple of 'good' years (it started in 2006 I think) but have now had a pretty bad one! Having said that, if I was looking for a new deal at the moment I wouldn't be doing massively better..........

It's the risk that you take. Going for a fixed rate is the 'low risk' option because if you get it wrong at least you can still afford to pay your mortgage.

Time2Go_25

It's never an easier call to make, you can go with shorter fixes, but then you pay more fees. All you can ever really do is look to see what you think is best for you.

There's always problems with boards of this nature in that if you ask what sort of mortgage to take out you'll get almost every option open, I'm sure looking back to this time last year people were giving advice to fix while you could as rates were on there way up and look what happened.

None of that is to say that the advice was wrong only that you can never tell what will happen to rates. Even now while everybody will probably agree that rates will rise, nobody can tell you when or by how much or for how long.

Fight_Club

a

jenner wrote: »

yep,,, i took out a 10 YEAR fixed rate 2 years ago. its 4.98, someone at work was going on about how he is only paying about 100 quid for a huge mortgage, im paying 560pm. BUT i made the choice, i wanted security for all them years and if what people are saying is right, the latter half of my fixed rate, say the last 5 years, the rate may be what most people are paying anyway, once rates have gone back up,,, so im not grumbling too much

I would say over that period of time you'll be laughing.

Interest rates are going only one way, the only question is how many "ups" they'll be when they're going "up, up and away".

Also....inflation is easier to tackle if you can predict it well in advance and cautiously raise rates apropriately. If inflation starts to rise suddenly while rates are at zero percent the will have to raise them very high very quickly.

In my humble opinion.

dunstonh

jenner wrote: »

yep,,, i took out a 10 YEAR fixed rate 2 years ago. its 4.98, someone at work was going on about how he is only paying about 100 quid for a huge mortgage, im paying 560pm. BUT i made the choice, i wanted security for all them years and if what people are saying is right, the latter half of my fixed rate, say the last 5 years, the rate may be what most people are paying anyway, once rates have gone back up,,, so im not grumbling too much

10 year fixed at 4.98% is great. You may be losing out now but in the long run you wont. Just you watch all those that have paid thousands to get out of a deal complaining that they should have stuck with their fixed rate in a few years time.

Remember you buy a fixed rate to give your safety and certainty. Not to get the cheapest rate you can.

daveb975

None of the rates mentioned here aare that bad - especially when you consider that non one could have reasonably predicted the base rate going this low.

A lot of people that I have spoken to are now coming back off the cheaper trackers to go onto the A&L 3.99% deal. It will cost them in the short term, but they are happy to pay that to get the security of a great fixed rate for a long period.