Finally been told I can't have collegue rate anymore...but..

bigstevex

When we took our mortgage out 2 years ago we got a halifax collegue mortgage (£50k tracked the base rate and £120K was fixed at 5.79 for ten years). Partner was made redundant last year but we are able to keep the product until now, just received a letter saying in 30 days the ~50K will change to SVR which is 3.5% so a 3% increase in payments. We can afford the payments no problem but when I phoned up to get a new deal on the 50K they told us we have to pay the mortgage fees again for the product we want (range from £700 to £1249 as we are negative equity), but when we were sold the mortgage originally, the lady on the phone said we don't have to pay fee's again we can just pick another product to move it on to, the only thing is I don't have this in writing and there's no info at all on the KFI or staff mortgage info sheet to actually say that we will be charged another product fee or vice versa.

What can I do?? They have a tracker product currently on 2.99% I'd like! But the fee is £1249 which defeats the object of getting the staff mortgage in the first place, we are only actual saving money on it now while the boe rate is low!

I hope all that makes sense :rolleyes:

opinions4u

At the time of taking the mortgage they didn't charge product fees for many of the products offered to existing customers.

The market has changed. Now they do.

Remember, there is absolutely no obligation for a lender to offer any alternative rates to the SVR anyway. Most won't for customers in negative equity.

I'd be tempted to stick on the SVR.

bigstevex

I think I was charged £499 originally because it was a 10 year deal obviously.

As you say I probably am best to stay with svr for now and overpay a bit I think but just out of principle is it worth trying to complain about what I was originally told or do I not have a chance because I have nothing in writing?

opinions4u

bigstevex wrote: »

I think I was charged £499 originally because it was a 10 year deal obviously.

That's nothing to do with the £50k side of things though.

As you say I probably am best to stay with svr for now and overpay a bit I think but just out of principle is it worth trying to complain about what I was originally told or do I not have a chance because I have nothing in writing?

I wouldn't bother. The fee free options they had always had higher interest rates anyway, so what you gained by paying no fee you lost in additional interest . You will have nothing in writing giving you access to any new deal other than the SVR.

One final thought, just check the tax man isn't charging your other half for having a staff loan. The day she was made redundant the deal became non-taxable! (It's probably already been done but you never know).

payless

2 yrs ago most "normal" tracker rates were around the BoE base rate ( approx 5.5% I guess then) - and fixed rates where in the 5-6 % range , so the "colleague " bit is a bit of a red herring to this sitaution.

bigstevex

Totally forgot to add we didn't pay the hlc on the mortgage of ~£3000 lol sorry (that was the main point of the collegue mortgage), so infact we have still saved so I'll just stick to the svr as suggested. Just been reading through it all again and refreshed my memory!

The boe base rate tracker has been great while the rate is low, saved us nearly £150 a month. I could see why you would think it was a red herring though with the rate being nearly equal to the fixed ones but as I've put above I totally forgot about the hlc we saved too!

As for tax situation, we stopped paying that the day she was made redundant anyway as I suppose it wasn't a benefit of the job anymore! but yes we had to pay 20% on the difference between it and the closest public product which was pennies anyway.

payless

Given your post title ... out of interest would the "collegue tracker" ended after these 2 yrs anyway or was it a "term deal"

If you was ending anyway - do you know what would they be offering now as a collegue rate ?

Are you free to move the fixed - penalty free ( if you wanted to ?)

bigstevex

sorry about the slow reply, the collegue deal was a term deal but restricted to a certain amount times salary, hence the split deal.

I think we're just going to stay on the SVR, 3.5% is better than most fixed deals available and hopefully we are going to start over paying soon