Looking For A Remortgage Is Far More Complicated Today Than 12 Months Ago.
With the best mortgage interest rates currently falling so quickly, you may be wondering if now is the time to swap mortgages to see if you can get yourself a better mortgage, which over the long term will save you money. But is this as quick to do as it was last year? Keith Lunt looks at how tricky this has now become.
Frankly, no. It is now far from easy to find yourself a new mortgage deal. The lenders have reacted to the current credit crisis by making it far harder to obtain a remortgage and at the same time many of the building societies themselves are finding it harder to obtain the money they need for lending to customers. If they can’t get the money, they then have to further limit what they lend.
Many of the big banks have now taken away their easy going mortgagesand are instead making it much harder for potential customers to take out a remortgage. They are putting huge boundaries around their remortgage deals that potential borrowers have to be able to climb before they stand any chance of obtaining a new mortgage.
Aside from the fact that a lot of the lenders have increased the basic remortgage charges, making remortgage far more expensive just to take out, many have taken away deals that would appeal to the home buyers the building societies are now worried about not being able to keep up repayments. They are securing themselves for the future by only accepting mortgage requests from those borrowers that they are convinced will always be able to pay back their remortgage. They are protecting themselves from the gamble they once used to take of risky lending in return for a high rate of return.
An example of this that is clear to see is the removal by the building societies of the 125% mortgage. Now you would be struggling to find a building society willing to give you 90% of the building value as a loan. And in a lot of cases, even securing more than 75% of the property value has become extremely difficult.
So what can you do if you want to remortgage and find a new mortgage rate to save you some cash, and take a benefit from falling mortgage rates? Well you can compare mortage loan rates yourself and see what is about, but many of the rates on offer are only available for certain types of customers. It is more efficient to approach a local mortgage broker and get them to check mortgage rates for you instead. This need not be a difficult search. Many websites offer this contact service, so you can still effectively do the search over the internet. And by using a free service, you are saving yourself time, and hopefully cash.
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