leaving fixed rate mortgage early

Anon2017

Please excuse my ignorance when it comes to mortgages. I'm in a pickle at the moment. Have to sell my house due to separation but we are tied into a fixed rate until August 2018.
Going to struggle to sell the house as it is (its only a year old). It goes on the market this week and even if we get the asking price, we have an early settlement fee of £6k which we just can't afford.

Any advice on what I can do (if anything)? I can't really up the price of the house as we're pushing it as it is. We could just leave it on the market in the hope it sells for more than we expect and then perhaps take it off the market and wait until this time next year. That is not ideal as we both still have to live in the house together......

clairebeth

I'm sorry you're in this situation, it must be very difficult for you. I don't think there is anything you can do to reduce the fees, as that's what you agreed to when you signed to mortgage contract. Does the fee rate reduce after this August, or is the £6k based on that rate?

Would renting the house out be an option?

ACG

The only way for you to avoid the ERC/part of the ERC is for one of you to port the current mortgage over to a new property. Even if you moved half of the Mortgage, it would still probably reduce the ERC more or less by half.

getmore4less

£6k buys a lot of weekend breaks if you need to get away from each other.

can't one of you buy out the other.

Once you have sold what are the plans could one of you start that early.

even for a quick sale you will be heading towards the end of JUne to complete so not that much longer to be ERC free.

AnotherJoe

getmore4less wrote: »

even for a quick sale you will be heading towards the end of JUne to complete so not that much longer to be ERC free.

14 months????

glosoli

Other than what has been mentioned above, regarding porting the full mortgage/part of the mortgage, if you really must sell and neither of you are obtaining a new mortgage, if your fixed rate is in place until August 2018, then presumably from September 2017 the early repayment charge percentage will drop slightly, which may lessen the blow.

getmore4less

woops read that as Aug this year

glentoran99

getmore4less wrote: »

£6k buys a lot of weekend breaks if you need to get away from each other.

can't one of you buy out the other.

Once you have sold what are the plans could one of you start that early.

even for a quick sale you will be heading towards the end of JUne to complete so not that much longer to be ERC free.

The ERC would still apply

Thrugelmir

Either start putting money aside or overpay the mortgage between you. No other way of mitigating the financial pain.