Do Halifax have me over a barrel?

teamscottbarnes

Evening,

I am feeling very frustrated with my current mortgage lender- Halifax!

:mad:

We want to have our loft converted and a garage built, so I rang Halifax to ask about extending our mortgage or having a second mortgage alongside our current one. The only thing they will offer me is additional borrowing at 5.79% which is way above what I could get if I was a new customer. The mortgage advisor just said there is nothing they can do and its a "buyers market"!

Our current LTV is 42% and we are tied in to our current 2yr fixed product until August 2014 (incur a £4000 charge), otherwise I'd have told them where to go!

I have rang a number of other banks in the hope of getting a second mortgage at a lower rate but to no avail- no one seems to do them anymore.

Can anyone suggest what I do/where I go?

Thanks
teamscottbarnes

Simon_gloster

A second charge with another company keeping Halifax.

Remortgage the whole lot and pay the ERCs.

Personal loan.

Halifaxs further advance rates.

How do you think the customers of other lenders feel when you rock up and get new business rates when they want to do home improvements at further advance rates?

Swings and roundabouts......

Thrugelmir

In a just over a years time you can remortgage. So the additional interest cost you'll pay is minimal in comparison to the cost of the works. Negotiate hard with the builder to keep the cost down.

Goldiegirl

Or another option - wait a year until you do your improvements, then you'll be free to to remortgage with no ERC

Building_Surveyor

save? personal loan? beg?

Dave_Ham

Hi there,

I think you need to take a bit of the responsibility here yourselves. I cannot imagine that a significant project like this was planned overnight and therefore on such a short fixed deal as a 2 year, it could be argued that you should have researched this first.

That said, I agree that the lenders are pricing to take advantage of the fact your options are severely restricted whilst tied in.

A secured loan will not be competitively priced, the ERC would be silly to pay so aside from borrowing from family or waiting; I cannot see a cost effective alternative