Remortgage. What's the plan?

adele9365

Hi. We bought our first house almost 2 years ago and the fixed rate is nearly at its end. I wondered what steps I should take to get the best deal. I guess I would call up our current lender first to see if they can offer us something better than our follow on rate and if not contact our IFA or scout about for a better deal myself?

We would like a 5yr fixed rate as we plan on staying put for at least that length of time and we are making use of our offset account so it must have that feature too.

I realise we will need to take fees into account when weighing up different deals over a 5 year period.

Any help would be appreciated.

Yorkie1

Your options are:

1. Stay with your present lender on their standard variable rate (SVR)
2. Stay with your present lender by transferring to a new product
3. Remortgage to a new lender

If you move lenders then it will be a full mortgage application, against the new stricter affordability criteria.

Many lenders do not check affordability if you transfer products with them, although some may.

There are no affordability checks to stay on the SVR.

A mortgage broker (rather than an IFA) would be the best person to speak to if you want assistance in identifying alternative products, although you should check whether they will tell you about products from lenders which do not deal with brokers e.g. First Direct.

duckandcover

I cam to the end of my 2 year fix a few months ago, and I stayed with the same lender but moved to a new product. I was able to get a brilliant rate without any of the mortgage application fuss, so it was the best option for me

Edit: on a practical note, I called them up when I had a month to go on my previous product.

kingstreet

A customer retention product with the same lender may now involve some status checks from today as such things have been dragged in to the MMR process.

Even though there may be no increase in the borrowing and the original FSA plans allowed lenders to use the "transitional arrangements" some appear to have ignored this...