Booking a fixed rate?

Meeper

Meep!

I'm afraid theduke is incorrect.

The £99 is all that is payable to reserve a rate with Nationwide and it is done at Agreement in Principle stage, not requireing a full application. If you do not go ahead with the application there are no additional fees to pay and there is no "black mark" other than the fact that you will have had a credit search done for the agreement in principle stage, which isn't of particular importance.

I would do the AiP and reserve the rate if I were in your situation.

mmcmahon

pledgeX wrote: »

So today I learnt that it's possible to pay a £99 booking fee with Nationwide and they will 'hold' their current rate on a 5 year fixed deal (4.79%) for 3 months that will tie in with our DIP we got from them yesterday.

Bearing in mind this is the best rate we can find at the minute, and is right at the top end of what we can afford, do you think it's worth paying this? If it rises again it might mean we can't afford the house we are currently negotiating on so I'm tempted.

Obviously if we don't put in a full application for the mortgage in 3 months we lose the £99.

The thing putting me off at the minute is that the rates have only just gone up this past week, is it likely to go up again in the next couple of months? I'm not sure how frequently rates change.
. These are the recent dates when they have chang
Is there any chance rates could go down? Either their rates or another lenders. I can't think of a reason why it would drop, and even if it did we wouldn't be to fussed about losing the £99 as it's not a massive amount of money in the grand mortgage scheme!

Anything else I'm missing?

Thanks for any advice.

They can change quite frequently. I recently took a 5 year deal with YBS and have been keeping an eye on changes. These are the dates when they have made changes to deals (either increasing rates or removing longer term products) -

19th Nov 2010
21st dec 2010
20th jan 2011
08th Feb 2011
18th Feb 2011

so as you can see there was only a 10 day period last time before changes were made.

Thrugelmir

pledgeX wrote: »

True, but I have a 30% deposit now and would have paid off 5 years worth of the mortgage by the time the deal runs out, so would be surprised if house prices dropped by that much to leave us in negative equity.

In the first 5 years of a 25 year mortgage term you'll repay around £1,100 of capital for every £10,000 borrowed.

A mortgage is weighted to the majority of monthly payments being interest for the first 15 years or so. Even after 20 years you'll still owe 30% of the original capital advance.

MrJF

It might be worth you knowing that they always charge £99 for a mortgage application, and to be honest I don't think their range would change that much if you wait 2 months and then find a property. My advice would be to hold tight.

I've learnt lately how important it is to shop around. We had a house fall through, but were going with N'wide for a property.

£99 application fee, £280 survey and the £396 product fee would be added to the loan (so not payable up front, but not free). This was 2 years fixed rate at 5.98%, not bad as we're first time buyers, but the house fell through

Shopping around this week I found one with Halifax. Free to apply (as opposed to £99), £315 valuation fee (which is refunded if the mortgage completes), free product fee (compared to it being added to the loan), and also £400 cashback on completion. This was 6.09% which we thought was quite a difference, but it turns out it's only £2 a month more

pledgeX

The problem we have is we're looking to borrow a lot in comparison with our income as we have poorly paid jobs, so the number of lenders that are willing to lend us this amount AND have a competitive 5 year fixed rate (under 5%) is very small, hence why we don't want to blow our chance.

We saw Northern Rock's deal jump from 4.08 - 4.88% which is a huge jump and if a similar jump happened again we'd absolutely kick ourselves for not spending that £99. At least when it was 4.08% we didn't know about the possibility of paying the fee so we don't feel as bad!

Meeper

I don't think their range would change that much if you wait 2 months and then find a property

I hope you're kidding. Nationwide have changed their rates twice just in the last week. Fixed rates are changing every day at the moment, and not for the better!

Book. The. Rate.

tiptoe_mouse

Meeper wrote: »

I hope you're kidding. Nationwide have changed their rates twice just in the last week. Fixed rates are changing every day at the moment, and not for the better!

Book. The. Rate.

This.

We managed to book a five-year fix with Nationwide on Monday at 4.49% - I believe it was withdrawn by the following day. £99 well spent, I feel, as the comparable product is now 4.79%.

tiptoe

pledgeX

Got it booked at 4.79%. Wished we knew about it sooner and we could have saved a packet. Oh well, we can always be optimistic and hope someone drops their rates within the next 3 months lol