The One Account

sassybird

thaylock wrote:

I have had a OneAccount for 1 year & it's works very well for people with a reasonable ammount of savings, I would be hard pressed to find a better mortgage deal than the one I currently have with the OneAccount. A couple of months ago I got my property re-valued which decreased the LTV, which means my interest rate has been reduced from 6.25% down to 6.05%, not bad for an outlay of £75 for the valuation fee. This is a variable rate mortgage so you should make sure if this type of mortgage suits you best - the OneAccount don't offer a fixed rate mortgage. I am literally saving hundreds of pounds per month in interest, best part of all this is I don't have to pay any tax to the taxman on my savings.

Was the £75 valuation fee through the One Account itself?

I'm trying to ascertain where the cheapest valuation would be available from.

I'll then have to give the place a lick of paint as I think with all the make-over programmes on TV, that seems to always affect the valuation for the better doesn't it.

grumbler

Thank you, Bunking_off
After all your comments this mortgage looks more attractive for me than OneAcoont (currently I have 5.29% tracker with Woolwich, no tires). For others who could be interested - some essential information from Frequently Asked Questions
-Mortgage is offsetted by special Offset Savings account
-Max offset 85% of mortgage
-Max LTV 85%
-'Interest is calculated at the end of each day'

Any further comments about drawbacks/pitfalls are welcome!

Hobo_2

bunking_off wrote:

Yes but e.g. if you pay your mortgage off 10 yrs early, you'd then have 10 years worth of mortgage payments to use to develop savings.

Seriously, if you're saving in preference to paying down your mortgage, you must be doing so on the basis that you can get a better return from investing a £1 in your savings fund than you do from reducing your mortgage by a £1. Given the latter pays 5.85% net of tax risk free, it'd have to be a pretty good savings vehicle to beat that.

Sure, you don't have savings, but you have the ability to "reclaim" your overpayment by spending up to the agreed facility.

Yes that`s my point start spending your facility, means you have not paid mtg off!

bunking_off

Hobo wrote:

Yes that`s my point start spending your facility, means you have not paid mtg off!

Fair point...which is why it's only for the disciplined.

Personally, I have this hellishly complex spreadsheet on which I "overlay" the loans to form the composite One Account. So, my One Account balance consists of part way through a mortgage being paid over 18 years, a car loan over 4 years and a car loan over 3 years. Each month I calculate what I should owe on each, add them together, and that tells me whether I'm ahead or behind plan.

Not keeping an eye on things like this is a recipe for still having a mortgage when you're 64 and 3/4 years old...

thaylock

sassybird wrote:

Was the £75 valuation fee through the One Account itself?

I'm trying to ascertain where the cheapest valuation would be available from.

I'll then have to give the place a lick of paint as I think with all the make-over programmes on TV, that seems to always affect the valuation for the better doesn't it.

The OneAccount insisted I have to get the valuation via them, but they used CountryWide to carry out the valuation.

thaylock

bunking_off wrote:

Correct, but informally OneAccount could probably be better described as a tracker. No guarantees that this will continue, but in the 5 years I've had one, they've religiously increased/decreased interest rates in line with the BoE on the same day.

Bunking, I agree with this statement, but this rule also applies to variable rate mortgages, so you could argue a tracker & variable mortgage are pretty much one of the same, unless anyone begs to differ.

bunking_off

thaylock wrote:

Bunking, I agree with this statement, but this rule also applies to variable rate mortgages, so you could argue a tracker & variable mortgage are pretty much one of the same, unless anyone begs to differ.

Hmm...not sure I quite agree. How many other mortgages have religiously followed the BoE rate on the same day for the last 5 years? The impression I get is that lenders tend to take the opportunity of rate changes to increase/decrease their margin. Plus, many lenders take far longer to act than the same day... e.g. the Newcastle one quoted earlier in this thread, which calls itself a tracker, only updates 14 days after any BoE rate change - great when rates are rising, not so great when they're falling!

thaylock

Fair enough

KrazyFool

not a chance in hell or their finanial company they represent!