If Santander were the last mortgage company in the world - I'd rent!

Lord_Isleworth

I can't stand them. Luckily my mortgage finishes with them in March. I am looking to move to Cooperative who have a 2.79 5 year fix. Anyone else know of any decent fixes out there I've missed?

mollyjester

Quite a few have stepped rate offers at the moment which I suspect the co-op offer is too otherwise it would be a massive loss leader for them:

Natwest: 2.75% going upto 4%
ING: 2.44% going upto 3.99% (2yr fixed)
Nationwide: 2.69% going upto 3.99% (3yr fixed)

The Woolwich have a couple around 2.39% as does the Coventry. Maybe worth shopping around a bit online before taking the 'leap.'

Lord_Isleworth

Stepped rate as in revert to a higher rate once deal finishes?
I think 2.79 for a five year fix is good.
Others slightly better but 2 and 3 years.

ACG

I dont think Santander really want to lend. They seem to make it hard going at the minute for everyone but the least risky.

I think theyre trying to reduce their lending - although i could be wrong.

dimbo61

Spanish Bank ! Looking to reduce there lending book in the UK.
The coop deal is one of the best around.
The YBS do a 5 year offset fix at 3.19% if you have savings or can put money into the offset account every month?

Lord_Isleworth

Is the perceived wisdom that offsets only work if you have 20% of the mortgage outstanding available in savings? thanks for comments - think I will go coop

Thrugelmir

ACG wrote: »

I think theyre trying to reduce their lending - although i could be wrong.

CEO of Santander UK sees better profitability and return on capital on business lending rather than mortgages.

Property price boom was built on high volume availability of cheap credit. Now banks are deleveraging their balance sheets to comply with Basle 3 regulations. We are moving back to a position of lending practices 20 years ago.

Thrugelmir

Lord_Isleworth wrote: »

I can't stand them. Luckily my mortgage finishes with them in March. I am looking to move to Cooperative who have a 2.79 5 year fix. Anyone else know of any decent fixes out there I've missed?

Co-op's SVR is same as Santanders. So worth looking at follow on rate as well.

Silvester

I can't really comment on the rate offered by the Co-operative now, however I would like to add that we recently purchased a property using the co-operative and we were so pleased with the service.

We had tried purchasing a house a few months earlier and it ended up falling through as we were applying with Nationwide at the time and they were useless.

Co-operating seem to be offering decent rates, whenever we talked to the contact centre the staff were all so helpful and the mortgage we took they seemed really good with what you could do with the mortgage - payment holidays, ability to port the mortgage with you, etc.

Would definitely recommend.

Lord_Isleworth

Thanks Silvester - I have been dealing with a named person in their call centre and very please so far. our LTV good so obviously looking at a decent rate. Shaved 3% off my rate moving so pleased but have had to pay 5.79% for four years so yin and yang really.

ACG

I used to work at Co-op mortgages.
The service is really good all the people there are helpful, infact i cant think of 1 person who would actively go out of their way to be awkward or unhelpful.