Your experience of HTB 2 or 5 year fixed

CaznBen

We're going down the HTB route.

Keen to hear about your experience of fixing for 2 years vs 5 years. Our situation would be keeping the HTB EL for 5+ years.

We see benefits of both 2 and 5. I like the idea of a lower % ~1.39 for 2 year vs 2.25% for 5 year, I also like knowing what I'm paying for 5 years

Our concern is remortgaging after the 2 year period, and being stuck with a limited number of lenders who would remortage with a HTB EL in place.

Thanks in advance

Thrugelmir

Remortgaging after two years is akin to taking a risk. Yet you say "I also like knowing what I'm paying for 5 years". A contradictory statement. Remortgaging isn't a cost free option either. 2.25% is a low rate. Nor are you likely to better 1.39% in 2 years time. BOE is already signalling that the market is too dovish on interest rates. Suggesting that they are monitoring both inflation and consumer debt levels closely. Will rates may not rise quickly. When borrowing thousands of pounds even fractions of a percentage rise equates to a considerable amount of money.

alex_163163

Take a look at the website https://www.myfirsthome.org.uk, and read the remortgaging section.
When remortgaging, you also need to take into consideration that you will be required to apply for permission from the HTB company to do this and pay and admin fee to do so.

Nath4n

Something that hasn't been mentioned in this thread so far is Product Transfer with your existing lender rather than a full remortgage.

For example, I am using HTB and I also went for a 2 year fix with Halifax as the interest rate was low. At the end of this 2 years if I wish to stay in the property for a further 2 years (likely) I will simply do a product transfer with Halifax and take a further 2 year arrangement at a much lower interest rate than the SVR. Unless interest rates increase massively I will be much better off doing this over 4 years than fixing for 5 years.

This way you also avoid having to go down the rather complicated process of asking the HTB administrator for permission to remortgage and paying admin fees to do so.