barclays base rate tracker ANY GOOD ?

photome

My fixed rate is about to come to an end and my current lender is not coming up with anything very good.

I have had a look around and I am leaning towards the Barclays/woolwich base rate tracker.

It is 0.19% above barclays base rate for the term of the mortgage so it is currently 4.69%.

No set up charges and no early repayment charges, what are other peoples views on this please

tomstickland

Talk to an all of market broker.

joepubli

photome wrote:

My fixed rate is about to come to an end and my current lender is not coming up with anything very good.

I have had a look around and I am leaning towards the Barclays/woolwich base rate tracker.

It is 0.19% above barclays base rate for the term of the mortgage so it is currently 4.69%.

No set up charges and no early repayment charges, what are other peoples views on this please

I reckon its a pretty good deal unless:
1. you are someone who is happy to keep changing your mortgage every couple of years. You can probably get a better short term deal or if you have lots of spare cash, offset deal - see separate thread.

2. You think interest rates will go up and want to lock in a fixed rate.

tomstickland

Check out online mortgage comparison sites, like Charcol.

stanmoresaver

tomstickland wrote:

Check out online mortgage comparison sites, like Charcol.

Disagree!

I will say that - IMHO, as a remortgage tracker- it is an exceptional product so needs no comparison website checks. Barclay's/ Woolwicch's admin is poor though and if you want to offset there are other products that should be considered-
:-)
Therefore- it's advice as to the suitablility of the product type that you may well need and therefore consulting a WoM broker that should be your course of action rather than a comparison site!


SS

Ok- TS- just seen you first post- agree with that!!!

:-)

MortgageMamma

We love the woolwich lifetime tracker dont we SS?

But yes, the admin is poor, let a WOM broker with a good relationship with woolwich take the strain for you.

MM

Joe_Bloggs

If the 'admin is poor' what does this mean in practical terms for a broker or a foolhardy consumer who tries to deal with them direct.
J_B.

Craig_A

I saw this same mortgage earlier this evening and may be interested but the 'poor admin' comment is helpful! Also I notice that you are required to open a current account with them but i couldnt find any further details on that - ie do you have to pay your salary in each month or what?

MortgageMamma

The Woolwich, in mine and some other brokers opinion are an administrative nightmare. I only ever place business with them if they are MAJORLY, and I mean MASSIVELY competitive with anything. But the lifetime tracker is hard to ignore at the moment.

The thing is, and this is frustrating for brokers (I dont know about people who go direct as I generally have not dealt with them) is that they take forever to pick up the phone, the staff seem to have no idea how to help with queries or indeed any idea what they are doing, the actual back office mortgage processing teams are inefficient, and having had a number of glaring big mistakes and issues with them in the past its led me to the opinion that they really do not know what they are doing. When you try and speak to someone in authority you can seldom get anyone, and when you do, they really don't give a monkeys. As you can tell, I REALLY dislike Woolwich.

If you want a company that offer quality service, and are efficient and helpful and currently competitive, I would always recommend the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (First Active, One Account, Natwest & RBS) and second to that I think the Nationwide are fantastic. Both of these also have great customer retention deals, so they could be a long term lender rather than switching about and incurring more and more fee's over the mortgage term.

pipee

Does the Barclays Base Rate mirror the BOE base Rate 100% i.e. is it the same thing?

photome

pipee wrote:

Does the Barclays Base Rate mirror the BOE base Rate 100% i.e. is it the same thing?

No it doesnt but they are generaly the same.

Thanks for all your input,I am the OP, I do know what you mean by their office/ admin staff as seven days ago they promissed to ring me to give me datails of this mortgage and I am still waiting.

I only have a 62000 mortgage and an endowment that will mature in 5 years time that will pay off most of it, That why I always look for fee free deals and I thought this lifetime tracker looked good and hopefully would take me up to the time I can pay my mortgage off completely