Why look at remortgaging? It is a way of either getting a new remortgage rate with your existing provider or to get the best remortgage deals available at that time via another lender. It will allow to you capital raise on a new rate either with your existing lender or the new one, subject to lending criteria.
Sometimes consumers can confuse the difference between a remortgage and a secured loan, both loans have a legal charge on the property. A remortgage can be used for most things like capital raising normally any purpose up to a maximum 90% loan to value, where as a secured loan will normally only allow you to borrow up to 70-75% loan to value, an addition to this is that the maximum that one can borrow is 100k, where as a remortgage will allow you to borrow as stated earlier 90% but you must have a clean credit score and income to support the new loan.
When looking at a remortgage there will be certain factors one has to over come, the first one would be knowing what product to select, in this case we will look at fixed rate mortgages. This type of product will guarantee that you will know how much you will pay on a monthly basis, this will help when budgeting. You will normally be tied into this product for a set period all depending how long you wish the guarantee to stay in place.
So is it going to be a tracker rate remortgage? This is where you current interest payments will be lower than that of a fixed rate remortgage, as it has been for the last two years, but will inevitably increase as and when The Bank of England decide to increase interest rates, then you will have to budget carefully as interest rates could increase quite dramatically in the coming years. With this product you can actually get an offset tracker remortgage, this is especially popular with higher rate taxpayers, as instead of the higher rate taxpayer receiving the interest from the linked current account it will offset against their mortgage account, which is a great way of reducing your mortgage balance quicker.
There are numerous other choices in the remortgage market, from variable rate remortgages to buy to let remortgages, with such a choice, we would strongly recommend that you seek independent financial advice as to what is the best way forward.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders has stated that in August 2009 lending for remortgages was only 25,000 this has dropped by 13 % on July’s figure and 19% lower than that of a year earlier. The housing market at this moment in time is struggling along, the main reason for this is that banks have had no liquidity to lend, thus have had to go to the government with their begging bowls out, the Government and the UK taxpayers have had to bail out some of the banks, the others have just left the arena for a period of time and are waiting to come back in when the market has stabilised itself.
Banks and building societies in the last few months have had to slash interest rates and booking fees, to draw in the new and existing clients, there once again is a real market place to look at getting some fantastic deals in this market place, but why has this changed? Well in October 2010 stated that the market was getting back on track, as in September 2010 there was a huge increase in business as remortgages jumped 35% and as a result this has lead to all bank and building societies looking to retain or gain new clients with lower interest rates on offer.
Advantages of remortgaging can be in the form of lower interest rates for the home owner and taking advantage of consolidating higher paying debts such as credit cards, personal loans or even some of those Christmas shopping credit facilities that charge 30%. You could even look to release equity to pay for the house being extended if done in the right way will add value to your property, or even for a deposit for your children to buy their own home.
Remortgaging may seem simple, well so you thought! It has never been harder to obtain finance since the inception of the credit crunch, lenders have decided that they only want the certainty that the client looking to remortgage has a good clean slate, they are not looking for clients that have recently missed a payment for example on a credit card or an unsecured debt, if you have lenders will not even look at remortgaging your existing property once they have done a credit score on you they will decline the application. Your best bet is to make sure that you check your own credit score prior to an application, you can do this online and it will give you an idea or whether to waste time applying for a remortgage in the first place.
Completion of that lengthy remortgage application form, this will require you to bring along all relevant documentation ID and address verification for money laundering purposes, have a credit score done online through either your local bank, IFA or whole of market mortgage broker, once this has been clarified all relevant information that you had brought along to the meeting will be sent to the lender for checking, once satisfied they will instruct valuation on your behalf, in the meantime your solicitor will be writing to existing lender getting a redemption statement so when the funds come through they will be able to pay off your existing liabilities, once this has been concluded the remaining balance will be sent to you. So if you want the best remortgage deals start searching now.
James writes for Just Remortgages one of the UK’s top sites for information on the latest remortgage rates, and best remortgage deals available in the market.