Halifax rise..am I affected?

Something

I believe I will be, but its a bit confusing.

Mortgage taken out feb 2008
5 year fixed at 5.85
Due to end feb 2013
Previously advised I would drop to 3.5%

I'm guessing, we are now looking at 3.99?, anyone able to advise

Senior_Paper_Monitor

That's correct

Something

I assume the svr rate change is within their rights so they won't be offereing any deal (i.e. early repayment charge wavering)?

Thrugelmir

No doubt other lenders will follow suit in raising interest rates.

GB350

Something wrote: »

I assume the svr rate change is within their rights so they won't be offereing any deal (i.e. early repayment charge wavering)?

You will have a 3 month window from the date that they implement the rate rise to pay off your mortgage in full without incurring any ERC's..
I'm currently locking horns with them over the fact that when they last pulled this stroke back in October 08 they didn't inform people of their intentions as was specified in the T & C's and denied us a chance to grab the significantly better deals that were available at that time.
I could have grabbed a base rate tracker + 1 % back then and saved myself about 10K over the last 3 and a half years..
If you took your fixed rate deal at some point early in 08 you may well be affected in the same way..
The people who implemented these decisions for HBOS knew exactly what they were doing and are no better than criminals in my mind....

tc9604

Something wrote: »

I assume the svr rate change is within their rights so they won't be offereing any deal (i.e. early repayment charge wavering)?

The letter V in SVR stands for Variable. They can alter it as they see fit.

4% is historically still a low rate, once they get back up to 'normal' levels of 6% things might settle down.. But who knows?

Dave_Ham

Depending on your mortgage size and loan to value, you may be fnancially better off breaking the fixed deal yourself and even incurring ERC's may be a better option.

In relation to the the other post about Halifax giving you a fixed and not the tracker which in hindsight would have saved you £10k.

If you spoke with a broker you are likely to have received advice based upon sensitivity to key principles. The same is likely in the branch as most offered advice in 2008. This means they would have asked you questions like what is more important to you stability of payments or taking advantage of future decreases in interest rates. Back in 2008, many clients wanted the consistency of fixed rates but funny enough now the base rate is where it is it was the tracker products that they really wanted - unless of course had the base rate gone to 8% and all the tracker clients write in and say they wanted fixed deals!

Either way 2 things the banks are likely to stand for are waiving early redemption charges and upholding an advice complaint based upon hindsight and the clients recollection of the advice received.

Changing the SVR however is naughty and lets not forget that there are others already at 4% + without the publicity Halifax and RBS have received.

GB350

Dave_Ham wrote: »

Depending on your mortgage size and loan to value, you may be fnancially better off breaking the fixed deal yourself and even incurring ERC's may be a better option.

In relation to the the other post about Halifax giving you a fixed and not the tracker which in hindsight would have saved you £10k.

If you spoke with a broker you are likely to have received advice based upon sensitivity to key principles. The same is likely in the branch as most offered advice in 2008. This means they would have asked you questions like what is more important to you stability of payments or taking advantage of future decreases in interest rates. Back in 2008, many clients wanted the consistency of fixed rates but funny enough now the base rate is where it is it was the tracker products that they really wanted - unless of course had the base rate gone to 8% and all the tracker clients write in and say they wanted fixed deals!

Either way 2 things the banks are likely to stand for are waiving early redemption charges and upholding an advice complaint based upon hindsight and the clients recollection of the advice received.

Changing the SVR however is naughty and lets not forget that there are others already at 4% + without the publicity Halifax and RBS have received.

We took our 3yr fixed rate deal at 5.89% in June 08 and were ok with it at that time. Towards the end of the year the financial climate had changed dramatically and in October, Halifax took a decision to cover themselves against future losses by increasing the cap on their margin above base from 2 to 3% on their SVR. Interest rates were in freefall by this point and were already down to 3% and only going one way. The thing Halifax decided not to do was inform the many customers on recently taken fixed rates that as part of the T&C,s of their mortgage they could leave without paying any ERC,s for a 3 month period from 31st October 2008. Thus myself and many thousands of others were stuck tied in to high rate fixes we would obviously have left.
I concede that it is easy to say now that we would have grabbed a tracker deal but thruthfully at the time I was tearing my hair out and crunching numbers to see if it was worth paying the 3k ERC to get out of the fix. Had I been given the chance to leave the deal ( fee free) as I should have been, well what would you have done?
I strongly suspect that their decision to withold this information was purposeful.

mavbj

Am I the only person who thinks that the use of the word "cap" by Halifax is misleading? If a rate is only capped until they want increase the rate above the cap then surely it is not capped. It's not transparent; they should dispense with the cap and be honest about it.

Whilst in the small print may say they can raise it, Halifax get more customers from making people think it won't go above the cap.

Thrugelmir

mavbj wrote: »

Halifax get more customers from making people think it won't go above the cap.

I doubt this was ever their intention. We live in abnormal financial times. Just be thankfull interest rates are still low.

Without QE rates may well be 1.5% to 2% higher.