Owning your own home

Broker up, they should then be in touch for the renewal in plenty of time having already found your next deal.

Exactly. Length of sleeve. Style of collar. Weight of fabric. Blend of fabric. Solid colour or pattern. It's a fucking minefield.

I'd hope then that you would have time but I'd keep your ear to the ground and if you start to hear murmurings get out fast.

We're just in the process of renewing. Broker got in touch a couple of weeks ago to remind us. Saves a bit of cash each month...

Bit late on this but the lease indicates the boundary between the communal areas and non-communal areas. But it doesn't indicate what those non-communal areas are. Looks like the attached.

Should the lease define what those boundaries indicate?

1 Attachment

Nationwide and Clydesdale are great if a significant proportion of your salary is variable/bonus.

20% is variable. Looks like I am fine though, the bank offered me 4.3 times more than I need/asked for, based on salary alone.

My 5 year fixed rate (3.19%) is coming to an end. In that time my LTV has gone from ~65% to ~33%.

What sort of deals on rates/reduction in monthly payments can I expect that to manifest itself as?

~65% to ~33%.

how!? over paid?

3.19% is quite high IMO. My 2 year 2.24% is coming to an end in October I have a choice of another 2 year fixed or 5. Five comes with £90 more per month because of interest rate diff. I am ok to do a bit of admin (and broker takes care of it for £100) than pay banks more for the same thing.

Diminishing returns; don't think there's an advantage to anything under 60% but may be wrong...

Bought in Walthamstow just before it went absolutely mental. Might be able to introduce some other funds to get the LTV down to about 27%, but from a brief look it looks like that's not going to drop me any bands, so not sure if that money is best used elsewhere (e.g. saved, improving the property etc).

Yeah, think you're right. Probably should have scraped around and got it under 60% initially.

Where in Walthamstow?

Off Lea Bridge near Markhouse

Seems to have calmed down a bit in Walthamstow. Year-on-year growth is down a fair bit. Of course, we bought when it was mental.
Got outbid on a pokey 1 bed warner by £50k... Madness.

I am in the middle of re-mortgaging, the amount is 125k plus 10k to get the plastering etc finished, so 135k against a value of 400k for the flat.

With Brexit I think that the slump in house prices that we've seen recently is going to accelerate, and inflation is going to continue to rise.

Now the classic method of fighting inflation is to raise interest rates, but that would accelerate the fall in house prices as money becomes harder to obtain - so I don't know what the BoE is likely to do there.

So I don't know if a fixed rate mortgage for (say) five years is a better idea than a tracker.

In terms of LTV - if I secure a mortgage at the current 35% loan to 65% value, then the flat loses half it's value over the next couple of years as our economy implodes can the bank change the terms of the mortgage?

BOE have indicated that interest rates will go up but not for a year or two and when it does, it will be slowly.

Of course, they can change their minds on that.

they sure as shit aren't going to go down. So if you can find a decent fixed rate i'd take that.

They can't change the terms mid contract

Or fix for two years, by which point the outcome/ impact of Brexit may be clearer?

I'm wondering whether fixing for five years and then overpaying might be an idea.

I'd hope that the flat won't be back at it's 2010 value in five years, but it's very much a possibility.

how!? over paid?

Doesn't sound too odd given property prices. Mine's gone from 75% to 36% in just under 4 years #boastpost. With normal repayments it'd be 62%. With overpayments 56%.
Then the overwhelming difference is the bank have estimated the house has gone up in value by a little over half.

Is it worth overpaying if the interest rate is this low? Vs saving up cash for post Brexit apocalypse and Rapha City collection.

If my mortgage advisor and zoopla are correct, my LTV will have gone from 95% to 60% in two years. So my remortgage will be £217k borrowed against a £361k place.

Sticking with the current lender will likely be much easier than having to re-apply elsewhere. Is there going to be that much of a saving at that level to warrant moving lenders? As it stands, staying put with the Halifax drops my monthly payment from £1,300 down to under £900 on a 2 year fix, which makes me happy.

Probably not, but it lets me use the overpayment later on if I can't make repayments. If I need the cash later I could just stop paying the mortgage for a while and let it eat into the reserve.
So it seemed worth building it up before later swapping the house for some Rapha slippers.

Putting actual numbers on it, it's gone from 225k mortgage on a 300k house to 168 on a 468 estimation.

hmm maybe I need to do this LTV math