Owning your own home

in theory, at least, all other things remaining equal, the amount you pay over an arbitrary fixed rate term is expected be pretty close to the amount that you would pay with a floating / tracking rate

That's an interesting theory (perhaps one for another thread).

You could make the counterargument that the High Street banks are mostly funded by deposits rather than RMBS or bilateral facilities, and the correlation between Bank Rate and deposit rates can be low. For a High Street bank then, linking its asset book to Bank Rate might add basis risk rather than remove it. Therefore structurally incentivised to offer better fixed rates?

Can't be a coincidence that the 5Y fixed best buy table is now all High St banks rather than building societies etc as it was 6-12 months ago.

Yes, they have been removed and just being relaunched at higher prices.

Natwest is probably the biggest bank that has held off on rate increases and haven't pulled their deals or repriced them as of yet, though its only a matter of time. Some lenders had partially pulled certain deals, and relaunching them shortly.

I think the majority of lenders will be back with a new range (all more expensive of course) tomorrow morning, or Monday.

What impact these new rates will have on the property market, and what future rates might also have is unknown at this point.

We've exchanged! Moving tomorrow!

Congrats!

Managed to change our 2 year fix to a 5 year before it went through today.

If rates drop to 1% in 2025 I’ll be expecting a forum bailout.

If they go to 7% then free kitchens all round

Seems fair

The reporting is that they are just gone/missing since the initial mini budget. If that's the case doubt they'll be reintroduced until they have an idea what's going to happen to interest rates. #november23rd

Thanks, I'm getting someone else to redo it all for me. It started leaking yesterday and I noticed that the flue had duct tape around it. Kind of amused at this point - it's like one of those "circle 10 mistakes" puzzles.

So, the guy responsible for boilergate has now said he will come round and fix it. What is a way of saying, "I've got someone else in, I don't want to pay you and I never want to see you again," that won't get my windows smashed in?

"I've got someone else in, I don't want to pay you. I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you."

@Marron I would just be honest and say I have someone else come and fix the issues. Suggest having the cost of the fixes reduced from the original fee for his work.

I've had to do the same when a builder I really didn't want back in my house turned up to fix a load of shitty work. He just shrugged and walked off (I still run into him in my Coop which makes for awkward shopping 🤣).

I was out of pocket as ended up paying for the work twice but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't loads and I was just happy to get it done.

I’m in the industry, and I’ve received notifications of rates being brought back by the likes of virgin, nationwide, Barclays, Santander, Halifax, Yorkshire tomorrow.

The rate hikes are significant, but mortgages are available.

Not sure BTLs will be very profitable next year at these new rates…

Nice one. We’ve just moved into our new place today. Feeling very happy I must say

Can you lower the effective interest rate by stretching the overall term, then overpaying to whatever level you are able?

Ohhh is there a spreadsheet calculator for this kind of thing?

I don’t have an excel but I know that MSE have a calculator for this

We have been paying double the requested amount for the last 8 years IIRC, and could increase that.

I’d in general like to reduce the number of changes of mortgage (and associated fees) as much as possible. I did look at what paying it off entirely in 5 years would mean, and it means a fair jump, but not impossible.

How does that work? If you extend the term but overpay isn’t it just the same as having a shorter term in the first place?

We actually did this to gain flexibility (you can choose to pay less by deciding which months not to overpay), but it doesn't reduce the rate.

As I understand it an overpayment goes directly against capital, the expected payment is a mix of capital and interest, so overpaying is more efficient at paying down the capital balance than paying a higher expected repayment on a shorter term. Plus you can vary if you need to.

Swansea building society appear to be offering lifetime of mortgage (in our case 23yrs on ~£90k) fixed rate of 3.3%. We’ve got 2 years left on our current deal, trying to work out if it’s worth jumping over or not… Payments would go up £50 a month.

Have you not paid for the job yet

Cash is fungible, right? Any cash in excess of the monthly interest charge is going to reduce the outstanding principal balance £-for-£. It doesn't really matter whether you call it a scheduled payment or an overpayment.

@Dammit Does that make sense?

Any interest is just a function of the capital outstanding at any given time, at the mortgage rate. Any payment you make discharges first the interest since your last payment, then capital. If you choose a shorter term then the payment would just be calculated as whatever you need to pay off the interest + capital during that term; if you pick a longer term, it will just spread it out more but I can't see why it would be cheaper. Your payments would be calculated to assume more interest as the capital is outstanding longer but if you overpay that would be reduced?