Offset/flexible re-mortgage on Shared Ownership property?

spikeydudeuk

Hey all,

I have a Shared Ownership (=SO) flat, which I bought on a Nationwide 2-year fixed rate mortgage. The deal expires later this year, and will revert to Nationwide's BMR - which is fine for the moment, but I'd rather get another fix in case the base rate rises.

My current Nationwide mortgage allows me to over-pay by £500/month, which builds up an 'overpayment reserve' that can be borrowed back or used to take payment holidays at any time. It's essentially a semi-flexible offset mortgage. I over-pay by as much as I can each month on the basis that if I fall on hard times, the flexible features mean the overpayment reserve is as good as savings.

If I re-mortgage with Nationwide, I'll still be able to over-pay, but they've removed the flexibility to borrow back or take a payment holiday. So clearly the mortgage is less flexible. And flexibility is really important to me.

When I researched this at the time I bought, these major lenders would consider SO properties:

Nationwide
Halifax
Barclays
HSBC (in theory, although they seemed pretty clueless about it - and their subsidiary First Direct won't do SO).

I'm after a fixed-rate SO re-mortgage that allows me to over-pay (which is easy to find), and then re-borrow or take payment holidays in future (which is the hard part). In an ideal world, I'd love an offset mortgage for ultimate flexibility, but they're really difficult to find on SO properties.

So far, my research has come up with:

Barclays - do a SO offset mortgage, but their offsets are only available for tracker mortgages, not fixed rates.

Nationwide - do a SO fixed-rate mortgage that allows overpayments, but won't allow re-borrowing or payment holidays.

HSBC - Allows over-payments; doesn't allow re-borrowing or payment holidays.

Halifax - Allows overpayments (as a concession that can be withdrawn at any time), and allows re-borrowing and payment holidays (of up to 6 months) at its discretion based on circumstances, rather than as a clear right.

None of these seem ideal. Does anyone have any other ideas? It might be that I'll just have to bite the bullet and choose a product that doesn't tick all my boxes - but that means I'll have to hold more money in savings as a cushion against financial problems, which means it'll take me longer to pay everything off.

Any help gratefully received!