May 17th 2008
Secured Loan or Re-mortgage, The Balance of Power.
Application fees on the best buy fixed-rate mortgage deals have nearly doubled in the past year, according to current analysis.
Fees for the best two year fixed deals around have increased in the last year from 995 on average to 1,400 over the past year. The cost of three year deals has also gone up from an average of 580 to nearly 1,150.
If you go back to last October when the base rate was 5.75% the average two year fixed deal was at 5.68%. The base rate is now 5% but the 2 year rate is still 5.57%. Three year fixed rate deals are also more expensive compared to the base rate. They have gone down from 5.84% to 5.65% in the same period.
All the recent publicity recently about the credit crunch and the bank’s fluidity problems has stoked the near panic in people and they are tempted to grab the best percentage rate deal they can find. The problem is that very often they overlook the fees which when added to the 2 or 3 year deal make the mortgage a lot more expensive than it first seems.
The large increase in application fees means that they now form a much more significant portion of the cost of the loan and really need to be considered just as importantly as the actual interest rate, especially in a relatively short term mortgage deal.
Even in todays uncertain financial circumstances there are many good deals to be had but people with not much equity in their homes or without a perfect credit score are unlikely to be able to get some of these deals as Banks and Building Societies and increasingly taking a tougher line.
Recent changes to the Consumer Credit Act and also the tightening of the financial markets which have restructured mortgage fees mean that possibly brokers and intermediaries should be pointing their clients towards a secured loan as it could be a much cheaper option than re-mortgaging the family home.
These new changes changes to the act mean that all secured loans for residential purposes of any size come under the Consumer Credit Act and therefore every loan has to have a cooling off period, so the client is not pressured and an important factor is that early repayment charges are a maximum of two months interest depending when in the current month they notify the lender. When you add in that there are no upfront fees in the shape of application fees, booking fees and valuation and conveyancing costs then it’s pretty easy to work out that on a direct comparison secured loans work out to be better value for clients.
If your mortgage deal has some time to run and you’re tied in but you want to raise some capital or consolidate some other debts then looking at a secured loan could be a better option than a re-mortgage.You now have the added protection of the Consumer Credit Act, a lack of upfront fees to enjoy and of course much smaller early repayment charges and you’ve no need to contend with the ERPs on your current mortgage deal.



































