Want to overpay this month 23 February 2011 at 4:37AM in Mortgage-free wannabe 13 replies 1.5K views

audi3333

Hi people,

Was thinking about overpaying my mortgage this month (or next) and while doing some research over the net came across MFW (really addictive and motivating):A.

So here's a bit about myself, i'm a first time buyer;) i brought a home 7 months ago valued at £200,000 and got a repayment variable rate mortgage of £150,000 for a 35 year term (allows for great flexibility). I want to pay this off as soon as possible.

Got in touch with Halifax (my lender) and the spokeswomen said they are offering borrowers on a variable rate mortgage to pay 20% until 31st March '11.

She said I was eligible to this offer as well but my contract says I'm allowed 10% overpayment for the next 2 years. Has anyone else with Halifax came across this before?

Thinking of calling back to ask for a letter stating I'm allowed to overpay by 20% as well just in case as my plan is to pay £18,000 within the next 2 weeks and save up my money again to overpay next year again.:)

GeorgieFTB

Hi and welcome

You posted a little early on in the day so got bumped to the second page, sorry, so no replies yet.

I got a Halifax mortgage in october and I remember being told this was a special offer, I'm sorry but I didn't pay that much attention to them because I'm going to struggle to get near 10% let alone take advantage of this.

If you can I say take advantage of this, someone might as well!!!

Let me know how you get on making OPs, how are Halifax at accepting them? I haven't got close to making one yet!

Gx

audi3333

Hi Georgie,

Thanks for the reply, I made a call to Halifax again today to go over a few questions and check whether my £10 OP (sent it to test if and when it reached them) was received.

They received the payment on the day I sent it via on-line, and also are very flexible with the term of the mortgage willing to increase it to 40 years (i think they take into account the age of the borrower) or decrease if I wanted.

So sent £10,000 today and hoping to pay another £8,000 in the next three weeks to bring my mortgage down to £132k.

I will not rest till i'm mortgage free:).

dimbo61

Well done on making your first BIG overpayment and good luck on the mortgage free journey.
You put down a 25% deposit which is good and I am sure that Halifax are quite happy to extend your mortgage to 40 years as you pay them more interest and could end up with a mortgage until you retire!!!
Are you on the SVR of 3.5% ?
You now have an overpayment pot ! so if things get very bad you could always ask for a " payment holiday"

audi3333

Hi Dimbo61,

I'm not planning on changing the term as 35 years is fine at the moment, plan is to pay it all off in 18 years time. I'm on SVR of 3.09%, just beat the increase by a month:).

Didn't know anything about the "payment holiday" so appreciate it. Still got a lot to learn yet.

BTW, should i keep the mortgage term of 35 years and reduce the payments or reduce the term and keep the mortgage payment the same?

cap on OP for the first 2 years:(.

dimbo61

Try and build up an emergency fund of 3/6 months of income in cash ISA,s earning 3.09% or more! and then overpay as much as you can

audi3333

dimbo61 wrote: »

Try and build up an emergency fund of 3/6 months of income in cash ISA,s earning 3.09% or more! and then overpay as much as you can

yeah plan on building up an emergency fund of 8 months soon as possible for the rainy days yet to come.

santander isa looks attractive

audi3333

Made £20,710 OP in March in total, so now my remaining mortgage is £128,740.

audi3333

now the saving begins. lol

originalmiscellany

Well done Audi! My frustration with saving is that I have good months then get really annoyed when I don't quite manage to maintain my high overpayments. But keep up the good work Audi

Sepa74

Congratulations, that's a great achievement.

Good luck with the savings