4.24% 4 year fix with no booking fee - should I bite their arm off?

diable

Kevmulcock wrote: »

Mortgages

Hi there, I have spent the last few days trying to rearange my mortgage.

I am about to sign up for a 5yr fixed at 3.94%. With £99 fees It was the best I could find! I am pretty happy with that!

HSBC seems a good offer and I want to fix but I don't have a job so its awkward. Maybe they know something we don't as it seems rates are getting lower for 5 year deals.

ginvzt

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Thanks fraser. I believe redemption on the second mortgage was 5% - i.e. around £1200.

Am off to phone Santander now.
Hoping no-one comes back with reasons not to!!


Thanks all. You've confirmed what I believed to be true.

I think you can apply for the mortgage with First Direct with the transfer date to be set after your current deal expires - after all, January is only 3 months away.

I am not sure, but I think our offer is valid for 6 months...

JimmyTheWig

Update...
I phoned them back and it's all going through. [Still have a 14 day cooling off period if anyone comes up with anything better, though!]
Apparently the woman I spoke to at lunchtime got it wrong [What? At Santander? Could you believe it??] and there should have been a £125 booking fee. But as she told me there wasn't they're honouring that. So am quite chuffed about that.

Thrugelmir wrote: »

What's the SVR rate after 4 years?

Currently 4.24% with Santander. I.e. the same as the fix. Likely to be higher in 4 years time by my reckoning, but who knows?

ginvzt wrote: »

I think you can apply for the mortgage with First Direct with the transfer date to be set after your current deal expires - after all, January is only 3 months away.

Sorry, I didn't explain this very well. My main mortgage deal finishes in January. But my second mortgage still has a few years left in the ERC period.
I can't move one away from Santander without the other. So to remortgage elsewhere (even in January) I'd have to pay the redemption on the second mortgage.

Batchy

Sounds to me you have done the right thing, locking yourself in sounds like a good plan.

I suspect Abbey are not expecting rates to increase by too much in the coming years... that pleases me.

[Deleted User]

Sounds like you did absolutely the right thing Jimmy. 4.24% isn't the lowest SVR in the world but it's a good fix, especially with no fee. And given you need to stay with Santander for a bit, the SVR will certainly be rising at some point in the next year. Think you've done well.

Though, of course, don't forget, if you find their SVR should drop in a couple of years, to claim that you were mis-sold, it's illegal, how can they do this, someone needs to clamp down on these fat cats, etc. Which is what everyone else seems to do these days.

JimmyTheWig

Deleted_User wrote: »

claim that you were mis-sold

Oh, they were very clear that it was a non-advised service that they were offering.
The first woman told me about _all_ the fixes that I was eligible for. E.g. they had a 5 year fix at 5.24% with £125 booking fee and 5% ERC. And they had another 5 year fix at 4.99% with £125 booking fee and 5% ERC.
I asked what the difference was between those two other than the rate [to check I heard correctly with the kids in the background as much as anything] and why anyone would go for the first over the second. She said she wasn't allowed to advise which of those would suit me better!!

Sponge

If I'd been offered the same deal as you then I would have taken it too. :money:

They've offered me 4.49% for 4yrs with a £100 transfer fee. But they've got an offer on at the moment - if you've banked with them for more than 3 months they waive the fee. I'll qualify the middle of next month, so I'm gambling the waiver is still on and I can get a similar fix. Fingers crossed.

kelloggs36

HSBC are offering 3.94% fixed for 5 years with only £99 booking fee. Depends on your LTV though.

Sponge

Update to this thread:

I called Santander a couple of days ago and signed up to the 4 yr fix @ 4.49%. They had to convert my Santander bank account to a 'Zero' account and this entitled me to have the £100 transfer waived. Not the lowest fix around, but once I took the lack of fees and no need for worrying valuations, etc, it seemed like a good deal to me.