changing mortgage provider

JoeyG

I've made a mistake

I thought my fixed term came to an end on June 15th but its actually June 1st

I've not had time to research any alternatives so my payments are going up £300 per month, what are the implications of switching in a few weeks, will I have to pay a fee?

tinkerbell84

As it takes around 6-8 weeks to switch mortgages, you were leaving it too late as it was!

Most mortgage products have fees now.

_Andy_

The fees having nothing to do with the timescales. You have an outside change of completing by the end of June if you go with an efficient lender - to do so you'll be better off NOT using free legals as this will slow things down.

MarkyMarkD

I'm surprised you say that, Andy.

Some lenders providing "free legals" don't undergo a full legal process, but merely purchase title insurance to protect their interest. That should be *far* quicker than a full legal process. Are you saying your experience is to the contrary?

_Andy_

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

I'm surprised you say that, Andy.

Some lenders providing "free legals" don't undergo a full legal process, but merely purchase title insurance to protect their interest. That should be *far* quicker than a full legal process. Are you saying your experience is to the contrary?

Title insurance speeds things up for sure. The issue that affects completion speed is when the solicitors are instructed. If you take Abbey, for example, they only instruct once the mortgage has been offered (which in itself could take 2-3 weeks).
It's a mixed bag and of course servive varies drastically between different solicitor companies.
Of course the OP would need to weigh up the costs of paying for solicitors (to gain a speedier completion), with going for free legals and risk going on to their lenders SVR for however many weeks.

MarkyMarkD

The marginal cost of paying SVR for a few weeks isn't going to exceed the cost of free legals, for many people. It's certainly not a huge reason to pay for legals unnecessarily unless you have a huge mortgage.

JoeyG

hmm thanks for the posts, I had no idea it was so complicated, I was not involved in setting up and I thought it was as easy as changing insurance companies!... I guess I could try some online brokers for quotes before I decided what to do

techno12

tinkerbell84 wrote: »

As it takes around 6-8 weeks to switch mortgages, you were leaving it too late as it was!

Most mortgage products have fees now.

In my case it took just over 2 weeks. Changing from Intelligent Finance to HSBC - my first remortgage, I swapped over last week. I'm amazed how easy and simple it was! They paid for the legals and valuation, and all I had to do was let the valuation guy in (he took like 5 mins with a tape measure), and fill out a couple of forms. Complete doddle!

Edit. Having said that, a friend of mine is still locked in some legal issue, 3 months later, he also went for a bog-standard remortgage, so I guess there was some technicality with his lease or something. He's not happy, as he's on the SVR now!

wymondham

At least now you can look around to re-mortgage immediately, without any timing problems and any penalty payments etc......

minimike2

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

I'm surprised you say that, Andy.

Some lenders providing "free legals" don't undergo a full legal process, but merely purchase title insurance to protect their interest. That should be *far* quicker than a full legal process. Are you saying your experience is to the contrary?

To be fair the number of lenders that do this are few and far between - I only ever recommend free legals when there is at LEAST three months until the expiry of the current mortgage. Free legals are a false economy.

HelpWhereIcan

The quickest thing to do will be to switch to a retention deal with your current lender - no valuation fees and no need for solicitors. 'free' or otherwise.

Which lender are you with at the moment?