Cinnamon Posted May 18, 2012 Share Posted May 18, 2012 We have a very small mortgage which only has a few years left on it & have always been on the SVR until yesterday when I made the decision to fix our rate for the next 2 years. I don't exactly know why I did it,but it just felt like the right thing to do now. Maybe because of the uncertainty with the Euro or something? Anyhow,has anyone else recently made a change to their mortgage & what spurred them to do so? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chickencam Posted May 18, 2012 Share Posted May 18, 2012 We also only have a small mortgage now, we have done it the opposite way and had a series of fixed rate deals so that we knew what our outgoings would be in 5 year chunks whilst the children were small and I wasn't working, the first one came up when our eldest started school the second one when our youngest started and the final one when ED was 15. Since then we have been on a svr of 2.5% and it hasn't gone up for 3 years. We have been overpaying for most of that time and I suspect that the loan is too small for them to bother with really, but OH wants to keep it because he is self employed ( and I work for the same firm as an employee) and feels that it would be good that a mortgage shows on the property in my name should anything ever happen where creditors might come after him, also it is our only credit and your credit rating goes down if you don't have any credit for a certain length of time even if you have a long history of paying things off. I think that interest rates will rise at some point but I can't really see them going back to the high levels of the early 90's. Edited to say that we have aimed to vitually pay off the mortgage before ED went to uni so that the money that we were paying on that could go towards her living expenses to reduce her student debt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olly Posted May 18, 2012 Share Posted May 18, 2012 Not changed for some years, I have a Virgin One account and it's been the best thing I ever did. I have reduced my mortgage quite a bit by overpayments, and I don't think I would ever have managed that with a traditional-style mortgage. It also allows flexibility, so if I need to buy something large or get work done on the house, I know I've got the capacity to do that as I can just draw down on it. You do need to be quite good at knowing how much you can spend, though, as your current account is always in negative balance! The rate isn't the best one you could get, but it's not bad. I don't think rates will go back to the very high ones of the 90s which I recall with fear, but they are artificially low at the moment and I think they will rise again in the next year or two. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicken Licken Posted May 18, 2012 Share Posted May 18, 2012 Fixed rate for me. I like to have the reassurance of knowing what my monthly outgoings are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yorkshire Pudding Posted May 20, 2012 Share Posted May 20, 2012 We took out a 5 year fixed rate when we bought our current house four and a half years ago. It worked well for the first couple of years but then rates fell and we realised we could have been paying far less. However the penalties for early repayment were too high for us to buy out until this year. We have now moved to a tracker which saves us £300 a month in interest This is the chance you take with a fixed rate, but I would hesitate to go for such a long term deal in future. I was also amazed that our previous provider couldn't offer us another mortgage and instead lost our custom - otherwise we would in all likelihood have stayed with them and just switched to a better deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
