A Few Questions Re Overpaying

Fredula

I'm hoping this might be the place to post a few questions about overpaying on your mortgage/managing your mortgage.

Firstly, how soon after your mortgage going through can you start to over pay? Is it straight away or do you have to leave it a month or so?

Secondly, our mortgage in principle is with Santander, and I was hoping I'd be able to manage it online (like it would just fall underneath my current account and savings accounts when I log in to online banking). Is this the case, or do you have to call them to manage it? I like the idea of being able to see how much I owe, how much is left when I put my overpayments in, etc, and that would make it easier to tell when I'm getting close to the 10% overpayment limit. I've been informed it may not be like that though, so if not, is it manageable online at all, or is it all post/phone work?

Alchemilla

In your position I would give Santander a call since I think the answers vary from mortgage company to mortgage company.

Geek4Life

I have a fixed rate mortgage with Santander and cannot view or manage it online. I phoned them to set up the details for overpaying. Everytime I make an overpayment they do send me the new mortgage total in the post so you can see your progress.

Fredula

I have more questions, sorry.

When I was with the mortgage broker he was on about capital payments. I don't understand what this is.

Basically, what I want to do is, overpay the 10% each year but as the mortgage is fixed, I still want to pay the same amount every month. Then after the 5 years when the fixed rate stops, I want to have overpayed enough for the payments to be lower than what they should have been if we hadn't paid anything off.

Does that mean that when I repay I don't need to ask them to shorten the length of time?

I'm so confused, I don't quite understand it all. Sorry!

Geek4Life

Yes make sure your overpayments are reducing your monthly payments (you can overpay more to compensate until the interest rates rise.) Otherwise the term will reduce each time you OP and it won't help you when the rates rise. Phone them and they will put a note on your account to make sure your payments are used in the way you want.