SMR until inheritance arrives?

Thoric

I'm with Nationwide, very good fixed rate that comes to an end in a couple of weeks. My plan is (was) to wait whilst mortgage rates improved until the last day to get the best next fixed rate from Nationwide again. That's looking to be around 4%, around double what I'm currently on. I have until 23rd to switch.

This was the plan until today when my wife's father suddenly passed away. She's always said she will use the inheritance to pay off a big chunk of our outstanding mortgage debt. So now I'm wondering if I shouldn't switch to another fix term mortgage because that severely limits the overpayments you can make. If we let the mortgage drop onto the exorbitantly high 7% standard rate it'll increase monthly payments by a fair bit, but allow us to pay off a massive chunk when the inheritance is settled, and thereafter allow us to pick another mortgage offer at a far better rate.

Is this a daft idea? It's too late to switch to another mortgage lender (assuming they'll want to conduct a valuation etc) so the way I see it I either take a 2year fixed rate now to prevent falling into the standard variable rate, or I let it fall into the standard rate whilst we wait for the inheritance to be completed and take a temporary hit on the monthly payments for a while. Not sure I'm able to truly predict what the financial impact is of each route.

Interested in hearing everybody's thoughts. Thanks!

Trevis

oldernonethewiser

Similar situation last year.

I was going to take a new fixed rate mortgage however the penalty for redeeming early was going to be £2000.

I decided to go onto variable rate and only needed to pay two months at a higher rate before I was able to pay the mortgage off.

Cost me about £100 extra  rather than the £2k penalty fee.

Beware of how long the process to be able to access the money may take from an inheritance.

My relative's estate is still not settled more than 15 months after their death.