Mortgage Query

Betsy18

Hi,

Firstly apologies if this is in the wrong thread!

My 3 years fixed term rate is now up and I have just received a renewal letter from my building society offering to stay on fixed term rate for 3 more years or to go variable. It turns out that by changing to variable at the present rate i would not be saving any money on what my mortgage is at the moment.

I am unsure what to do as the variable rates tended to be better value in the past but seem to be rising lately, so would i be as well to lock in the rate for another 3 years and hope for the best?

Any advice would be appreciated!

setantalive

The best value mortgages around are tracker mortgages and the banks are trying to take as many borrowers as possible off their trackers as they are losing money on them. If you fixed from a tracker mortgage in 2007 then you should be entitled to return to the tracker product you had prior to fixing. Your bank will probably tell you that they do not have a tracker mortgage product anymore, but this is irrelevant if the original letter of offer you signed was for a tracker rate. Check your original offer letter and also what you signed when fixing the rate.

If you started the mortgage as a fixed rate mortgage they usually revert to the bank's standard variable rate. it is very difficult to know whether to fix presently or take a chance on the standard variable rate. Banks are under huge pressure to recoup losses and existing customers on standard variable rate loans are soft targets - it is expected all the Irish owned banks will raise their standard variable rates again this year by at least .5% even though there will be no change in the ECB rate.

Betsy18

thanks for the advice setantalive will take it on board!:)