 asset. My family and I belong to one of the unlucky 1.4 million households who are having to remortgage our properties this year. Currently average rates for a five-year fix stand at 6.01 per cent but I suppose we should consider ourselves fortunate as we were canny enough to secure a deal in March when it was still possible to find a product hovering under 4 per cent. But even then, the figures that came back from our mortgage advisor were pretty galling; at our new rate of 3.94 per cent, our monthly payments on our four-bed detached house in south Buckinghamshire were £2,400 on a two-year fix or £2,350 on a five-year fix – either £500 or £450 a month more than we're currently paying. Ordinary people's financial straits have been well documented of late but it's worth stating again: coupled with record council tax bills, record energy bills and a cost of living crisis , it was £500 we could ill afford and would struggle to produce on a month-by-month basis. So we looked at paying down the mortgage and calculated that £100k would keep our monthly repayments in a manageable bracket. Even now, it's extraordinary just to write that down. Who on Earth has £100k just lying around? But, once we'd let the colossal sum percolate for a day or two, my husband and I did the maths, worked out that we could raid pension pots and stocks, tapped up our wider family for some loans and set about realising the money. Our advisor secured our new mortgage with Halifax and signed off, his work completed. As his parting gift, we were automatically pa){kind=link}
I thought it would be straightforward, but internet banking has turned remortgaging a house into a Kafkaesque omnishambles
The world wide web is a wondrous thing; it’s a swirling kaleidoscope of ideas and information, an encyclopaedia in my back pocket. And I enjoy ordering another shatterproof kids water bottle from Amazon Prime and receiving it the next day as much as the next exhausted working mother. But there are some processes that categorically should not be conducted over the internet, and one of them is remortgaging your largest (and in our case, only) asset.
My family and I belong to one of the unlucky 1.4 million households who are having to remortgage our properties this year. Currently average rates for a five-year fix stand at 6.01 per cent but I suppose we should consider ourselves fortunate as we were canny enough to secure a deal in March when it was still possible to find a product hovering under 4 per cent.
But even then, the figures that came back from our mortgage advisor were pretty galling; at our new rate of 3.94 per cent, our monthly payments on our four-bed detached house in south Buckinghamshire were £2,400 on a two-year fix or £2,350 on a five-year fix – either £500 or £450 a month more than we’re currently paying.
Ordinary people’s financial straits have been well documented of late but it’s worth stating again: coupled with record council tax bills, record energy bills and a cost of living crisis, it was £500 we could ill afford and would struggle to produce on a month-by-month basis.