Long-time lurker, first time poster. Posting here for traffic. Please be gentle .
DP and I are in the process of buying a new house. Moving closer to parents as Dad is very ill and Mum not coping as his carer. We are having to borrow more to do so, as we are moving from a cheap area into a much more expensive one.
We are long time Barclays customers, over twenty years. We currently have c. £53k left to pay on our mortgage (split into two parts) and 9 years left to pay it. We were very fortunate to get a great lifetime tracker deal when we first took out the mortgage: On £16k we pay 0.85% above base rate (so 1.35%) and on £37k we pay .19 above base rate (so 0.69%).
At our Agreement in Principle meeting with Barclays in November it was agreed we could port this current mortgage and, crucially, extend the term of it to 18yrs if we needed to. We subsequently decided we did need to extend it, in order to be able to have affordable monthly payments. The house we bought is at the top of our budget.
For the extra borrowing (which is £163k, taking our total loan to £216k) we have discussed the new rates Barclays would offer us. We are going with a 3-year fixed rate of 1.64% (more expensive than the rates Barclays first showed us in November, which is also not hepling).
On the basis of these discussions and working out our monthly payment scenarios, we find a house and have an offer accepted. I meet with Barclays yesterday to get the mortgage approved and signed off and the advisor starts off the meeting by telling me that as of January - as in 4 weeks ago - Barclays have changed their policy and they will no longer allow us to extend the term of the £53k part of the mortgage to 18 years. If we want to keep the lifetime tracker rate, we have to keep the term of that part of the mortgage to 9 years. This 'mixed term' scenario makes the monthly payments too expensive. So, the only option is to give up the tracker rate completely and put the whole £216k loan onto the fixed rate. Meaning that although our monthly payments will be affordable, we will be paying much more for our mortgage overall (my maths isn't good enough to do work out how much more). I asked the mortgage advisor if there was anything at all we could do, or anyone we could speak to, but was just completely shut down. If we want to keep the lifetime tracker rate, we can't extend the term and we've missed the boat by four weeks.
There are numerous articles in the press about banks doing what they can to get customers off of these cheap lifetime trackers. I am supposed to post back the signed mortgage papers today and am sat here hesitating and loathe to do so. I just want to ask if anyone has any advice about either taking it up with Barclays or whether we should just suck it up and accept that we've had a good deal and now we've got to face the reality of our situation and give up our tracker. I also appreciate that base rates are likely to rise so it will not be quite as good a good a deal when that happens.
Thank you wise women of Mumsnet.
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AIBU?
AIBU to think that Barclays should have honoured this? Urgent advice needed please.
41 replies
theedgeofthecloud · 09/02/2018 13:59
OP posts:
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