UK mortgage lender rates and fees - choose wisely!

April 30th, 2008

UK mortgage lender - rates and fees.  Choosing the right deal. 

Be careful when choosing a product that looks good on the face of it.  The best mortgage interest rates NOW attract the HIGHEST arrangement fees.  Because most of these fees are so high many people opt to add the fee to the debt (not everyone has £2-3,000 spare).  If you add the fee on it increases the overall cost of the mortgage slightly in the short term but massively in the long term.  

UK mortgage lender rates v fees - make sure the sums add up. 

Don’t forget the interest that needs to be paid on the fee added to the loan.  So if you intend to stay with your lender its important to consider upping your payments in the short term to ensure the fee is paid early.  But then off course you might just find that in real terms its no cheaper than another rate that does not have such heavy set up fees.   Choose a good broker who will do the maths for you!

Online mortgage application for UK home mortgages

Online mortgage application for UK home mortgages
I keep being asked why the Gift Wrapped Mortgages does not have a complete online automated application process. 
Well you can apply to us using the mortgage enquiry form, but the important documentation is the Fact Find where we really get to know and understand lifestyle and affordability.  Once you make […]

Flexible Mortgages - what is an Offset Mortgage?

Flexible Mortgages - what is an Offset Mortgage?
An Offset Mortgage is a type of flexible mortgage.  Put simply,  you have a mortgage and an account, maybe savings account linked to the mortgage.  That means if you have for example a £100,000 mortgage and say £10,000 in savings the interest for the mortgage is not calculated […]

Flexible Mortgage - what are flexible mortgages

Flexible Mortgages
Brief overview of the Flexible Mortgage
Flexible Mortgages originated in the mid 1990’s when it was referred to as an Australian Mortgage, where the bank or lender began to let the customer make extra payments into their account.  This had a massive impact on how interest on the account was calculated and it changed from yearly […]

House prices - check if they are falling.

One of the hot topics of late is houses prices.  Whether or not there is going to be a full house price crash is open to debate, but it is quite clear prices have faltered and in some areas have fallen.  There is a lot of speculation that prices are over inflated, the credit crunch […]

Halifax mortgage - changes to LTV

As from Monday 7th April Halifax one of the UK’s largest lenders is to ‘reward’ buyers who can put down a larger deposit, whilst reducing its highest loan-to-value from 97% to 95% for almost everyone.
Those who can afford a 25% plus deposit will be charged one-tenth a percentage less than the customers with a lower […]

Mortgage and remortgage companies (mortgage brokers) - what to look for!

Is your mortgage broker telling you he is  independent?  Do you know what it means?
All mortgage brokers must be authorised  to transact business by the Financial Services Authority(FSA).
To achieve this many mortgage brokers choose to align themselves to larger organisations (Networks).  They become Appointed Representatives of that Network and sell products from that Networks range […]

To fix short or to fix long is that the next question!

As endowments have lost credibility over the years more and more of us have reverted back to Repayment type mortgages.  When you paid Interest only and  could rely on your Endowment to pay off your mortgage capital  it was easy to switch lenders every 2 years or so, because the mortgage term had no effect […]

Whats happening with mortgage interest rates? To fix or not to fix, that is the question!

Well none of us have a crystal ball so no-one knows for sure .   I have heard brokers recommending Tracker rates that track the Bank Base Rate (BBR) and I read that the amount of take up for fixed rate mortgages has fallen significantly recently.  Isn’t it interesting that as Trackers become more popular the […]

Present Talking is up and running

This is the first of many posts on this exciting new blog.  I hope you enjoy.
 I want it to be fun, informative and to make  a positive difference to probably your largest single investment - your home.