Reliable Remortgage advice

Determine Affordability: Start by assessing your affordability to avoid getting carried away with home renovation dreams. It might be necessary to remortgage with another lender for a better deal.

Research Mortgage Options: Explore offerings from your current lender and the wider market. Consider a Product Transfer for potential cost savings and convenient online processes.

Choose the Right Deal: Tailor your choice based on your needs – fixed terms, future moves, and stability of repayments.

Initiate Mortgage Application: Apply online with lenders adopting digital processes. Some may automatically conduct property valuations through desktop surveys.

Navigate Application Process: The lender will evaluate your financial details, possibly requesting additional documentation.

Secure Mortgage Offer: Upon approval, receive a formal mortgage offer. If switching lenders, your solicitor will handle the final paperwork.

Completion: Experience the final transition of property charges and Direct Debit payments to the new lender. Additional fund requests, if any, will follow shortly.

Current Deal Ending:

If your existing mortgage deal is expiring in the next 6 months. If you’re current mortgage deal ends and you haven’t remortgaged, you may be shifted to your lender’s standard variable rate, which tends to be significantly higher than current market rates, averaging around 7.5% to 8.5%.

Desire for a Better Rate:

Seeking a better interest rate is a straightforward yet essential reason for considering a remortgage. If you’re looking to improve your financial terms, exploring available rates in the market is a prudent move.

Increased Home Value:

If your home’s value has surged since you took out your initial mortgage, you might now fall into a lower loan-to-value band. This shift could grant you access to lower interest rates, making a remortgage a strategic choice.

Concerns about Rising Interest Rates:

Worried about potential interest rate hikes? Before succumbing to panic, understand the nuances. If the Bank of England base rate is forecasted to increase, it may directly impact your mortgage payments based on your mortgage type. However, if it’s the rates for new customers that are rising, your existing rate may not be automatically affected.

Desire to Overpay:

If you’re eager to overpay on your mortgage but your current lender imposes restrictions, a remortgage offers a solution. By reducing the loan size, you may secure a more favorable rate. Be cautious of early repayment charges or exit fees, ensuring they don’t offset the potential savings from a new, lower mortgage.

Small Mortgage Debt Consideration:

If your mortgage debt is below a certain threshold, around £50,000, switching lenders might not be cost-effective due to potentially high fees. Some lenders won’t even entertain mortgages below £25,000.

Early Repayment Charges Awareness:

When considering early remortgaging, be cautious of Early Repayment Charges. If breaking free from your current deal is costly, explore options like negotiating with your current lender for a product transfer. This may involve a reduced early repayment charge, making it worthwhile if the new deal significantly improves terms without a lengthy lock-in.

Home Value Decline Impact:

If the value of your home has decreased, impacting your equity, it’s crucial to reassess. Even if you initially had a 10% deposit, a drop in house prices could leave you with a higher proportion of debt. This situation, known as evaporating equity, may lead to negative equity, where your debt exceeds the property’s value. Evaluate the implications carefully.

The length of time for the remortgage to complete is typically quicker than if you were to buy a new home. After all, you are staying in the home and moving from one lender to another.

Typically, from Application to securing your mortgage offer, the process is around 3 to 6 weeks.

If you have remortgaged with plenty of time to spare, the acting solicitor will arrange for your mortgage to complete on a specific date. This usually falls on the day that your existing introductory deal comes to an end with your current lender.

Your new mortgage will continue and you will receive confirmation from both lenders that the remortgage has completed.

This process can be repeated each time until you have repaid your mortgage in full.

There can be costs associated with a remortgage which include but are not limited to:

• Product Fees
• Valuations Fees
• Any Solicitor Fees
• Early Repayment Charges
• Admin or Deed Release Fees

Speak to your adviser about these costs that you may incur along the way.

Otherwise known as a transfer of equity or mortgage transfer you can:

• Add a person to a mortgage
• Remove a person from a mortgage
• Replace an existing person on a mortgage with somebody else
• Gifting a property

In short, no you won’t. If you’re just borrowing more on your existing deal with your existing lender then there is no need for any legal changes, which means no legal services are required.

Most lenders will also include free legals in their remortgage deals which means their chosen conveyancing form will cover all the legal requirements. 

There are a couple of situations where you’ll need to appoint your own conveyancing solicitor:

Adding someone to the mortgage –

If you’re looking to add a partner when you remortgage, you’ll need to get a solicitor as you are changing the ownership of the property. This is also known as a ‘transfer of equity’. You will need solicitors to amend the deeds for you and help draw up paperwork specifying how you will own the property. You can get quotes from conveyancing solicitors that will do this for you here.

Removing someone from the mortgage as in the above point means that the ownership of the property is changing, so a solicitor will be needed to amend the deeds.

You can remortgage at any time, but it only really makes sense to do so when it works to your advantage.

While most people remortgage when they reach the end of a mortgage deal, it could be advantageous to remortgage earlier if you could secure a lower interest rate or if you’ve built up a certain amount of equity in your home.

The decision of when to remortgage comes down to a consideration of costs and benefits. For example, if you want to remortgage before a fixed-rate deal comes to an end, you’ll probably have to pay early repayment charges or fees. These costs would often outweigh the potential benefits of remortgaging.

Remortgaging to release equity can be a useful way of borrowing and reducing your mortgage costs. By switching to a new deal, you have the potential to save money during the process.

A majority of people choose to remortgage at the end of their fixed-rate term to keep their mortgage repayments low. If you have equity in your home, remortgaging allows you to take advantage of this by releasing equity. This can be particularly beneficial during times of inflation-induced price rises, as it enables you to access capital from your home, easing increased living costs and potentially benefiting from a rise in house prices.

It’s important to note that releasing equity from your home involves some risk, so it’s crucial to ensure that you can afford to do so. This is because your outstanding mortgage balance is likely to increase. If you are unsure about the next steps to take, our advisors can provide further assistance and guidance.

In the UK, remortgaging stands out as a highly cost-effective method of raising capital to purchase a new property. However, it is crucial to ensure that your current property holds sufficient equity to make the process worthwhile. If you have not been paying off your mortgage for an extended period, there might not be enough accumulated value to support your next property purchase, or the associated costs may not be justifiable when compared to the amounts required.

It is indeed possible and quite a prevalent reason for remortgaging in the UK. If you possess sufficient equity in your property and meet the eligibility criteria set by your preferred lender (which can be either your current lender or a different one), there are no obstacles preventing you from remortgaging your home to consolidate all your debts. Interestingly, approximately 90% of lenders in the UK offer this option to borrowers.