general mortgage advice and understanding comparison sites

b56c

I know the final decision will have to be mine, but what are your views about fixing or not? My mortgage ends this month and I'm looking at trackers versus 2-year fixed deals.

Also just wanted to clarify something on the comparison sites. If the products are ranked in cost (low to high) over the 2 year term, then why in the next to last column - overall cost for comparison - are these percentages not also in the same low to high order? Here are a couple of examples:

Example 1: cost over 2 years: 9249 initial rate: 4.39 then 4.24 overall cost for comparison: 4.3
Example 2: cost over 2 years: 9324 initial rate: 3.79 then 2.49 overall cost for comparison: 3.1

The first has no arrangement fee and the second has a fee of £999. Since the rates in example 2 are lower I expected the cost over the term to be lower especially as I thought that the overall cost for comparison column would have factored in the arrangement fee.

Please advise.

Let_Us_See

Simple. If you want the certainty of budgeting your monthly mortgage payment then fix your interest rate. If you are willing to risk possibly higher interest rates, if BOE base rate rises, but wish to minimise mortgage payment select a tracker. Experts predict low BOE base rate for the next couple of years - but it was also the experts who get us into this current mess! Ho hum.

Why bother with comparison sites as none of them ever agree and you left with numerous queries. Save time and effort and just contact an indpendent whole of market adviser.

fagskf2015

Any Lender, like the ones you mention, that uses automated mortgage decisioning would decline you, if this adverse credit appears on your credit file in the first place.

Leon_W

Comparison sites are useless and I would only use one for very rough guesstimations. They take no account of lenders criteria, are often outdated, do not list some direct deals and none of them list deals that are available exclusively to brokers.

The "overall cost for comparison" or APR is also an irrevelance as it is so complicated to work out that it is rendered meaningless. The only way to work out which is cheaper is to get a pen and paper out and work out the overall payment over your required period factoring in all the associated costs.

The APR has to take account of ALL costs over the whole mortgage period so it can be possible for a "cheaper" mortgage to have a higher APR because of something like a mortgage exit fee or closing account fee being higher for that lender than another.

Regards