Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to be seriously seriously fekked off that I signed up for a 5.63% fixed rate mortgage in May 2008?

89 replies

bibbitybobbityhat · 06/10/2011 21:15

I can't bring myself to think about the money we would have saved if I'd gone for a variable or tracker.

How am I to know what interest rates are going to do in the future? I am no kind of soothsayer.

V v v v v annoyed and resentful and bitter.

OP posts:
daenerysstormborn · 06/10/2011 23:05

we did the same, luckily it was only for 2 years. am just on the base rate now, and it made our monthly payments go down by over £200.

stripeybump · 06/10/2011 23:06

Daisy - we got independent financial advice and he advised us to fix at our hideous 6.9%.

So erm what's your point? It's still a gamble, you just happened to win yours.

Original poster
bibbitybobbityhat · 06/10/2011 23:08

Oh yes, we had top of the range financial advice too.

OP posts:
lollystix · 06/10/2011 23:15

If you're coming up for remortgage have a look at an offset - we sold in Jan so are currently running ours as a current account but when we had it we paid off half our mortgage in 4 years as opposed to the pishy £12k we'd paid off the prior 4 years in front loaded interest. It's not for everyone but we get paid every 4 weeks and DH on commission and it really is motivating. Rate on ours about 3.75% and you can get out whenever you like but you do have to re-arrange your current account (but then someone will always pay you £100 to move to theirs).

DaisySteiner · 06/10/2011 23:17

Read my messages back. God, I do sound smug, sorry Blush Honestly, honestly not trying to rub salt into wounds. If it makes you feel any better most of my life decisions barring marriage and children have been utterly shit and we are the poorest of our friends.

Original poster
bibbitybobbityhat · 06/10/2011 23:20

Thanks for that lolly. We have looked at offset before, as we often have large amounts in savings (only because dh self employed so saves up throughout the year to pay tax in one lump sum annually) but our current account providers - First Direct - wouldn't touch us with a bargepole. Will def. look into it again when the time comes.

OP posts:
purplemurple · 06/10/2011 23:21

We were on a fixed rate, as that ended DH lost his job. He was out of work for three months and the mortgage insurance bastard small print didn't pay it. It went up by 50% then DH got another job paying 25% less than the previous one.

We were on the verge of reposession, then the interest rates started to drop and we could start to eat again :) and clear our arrears.

First time anything money wise has gone our way. my friend is in the same position as OP, and she has split with her DH, can't sell and the mortgage payments are massive compared.

lollystix · 06/10/2011 23:22

One account Wink can't fault them but not sure if they are the cheapest offset option about. They have lovely graphs you can tinker with though

myron · 06/10/2011 23:25

Definitely less risk averse than the majority on MN. Since buying our first house in 1999, we've chosen 2 yr discounted rate mortgage products before getting fed up in 2005 of being mortgage tarts so we decided to plump for what was then a new fangled product - the offset mortgage and picked the lifetime tracker (which wasn't the best rate at the time) of 0.49% over BoE base rate. I remember my cousin remortgaging a month before me on a 0.18% over BoE base rate which I wished we got in time but didn't. For a very brief period, I recall products offered which were below BoE base rates - now those would have been the best buys. The grass is always greener...

ShellyBoobs · 07/10/2011 16:22

DaisySteiner

At the end of 2007, my friends who work in investing/broking/finance were adamant that rates were only going to move one way, and that was up. They mostly (correctly) foresaw that inflation would follow an upward trend through 2008 and hence chances were that the BoE would chase it with BR rises or at least hold steady.

I actually learned of these people's true thought paths due to them crying into their wine on various nights out over amount of personal money some of them lost along the way through the crisis.

If you really did foresee the liquidity/funding availability crash, you did massively better than many professionals through that period.

So, either accept it was just a lucky guess or give yourself a lot more credit than you do by saying the massive drop in rates was easily predictable.

porcamiseria · 07/10/2011 16:24

me too, but 5.29

you know how I console myself, my value has remained the same in property value, so given recent events had I wanted to remortgage I would not have been able to as my equity was too low

PotterWatch · 07/10/2011 16:26

5.63%. I wish!!

We fixed ours at 6.75% for 5 years a few weeks before the base rate went down to 0.5%. We had very limited options at the time and we thought we were making the best choice. I have kicked myself ever since and we have over 2 years to go.

Grrrrrrr.

So YADNBU. Smile

whomovedmychocolate · 07/10/2011 16:28

Yes but surely better that than the current situation where no bugger can get a mortgage Hmm

donteatyourteawithnoknickerson · 07/10/2011 16:30

YADNBU.

We also moved in June 08 and got a fixed rate of 5.63% for 5 years. On a mortgage that was x3 monthly what we paid previously, so could really have benefitted from the extra cash.

i remember the advisor saying at the time that interest rates would probably go to 15% within the year - did she lie or was she honest... no one knows!

Seriously, I try really hard not to think of the savings we could have made, or even that rates will probably shoot up in July 13 :(

coraltoes · 07/10/2011 16:35

We went half and half. Felt i could take a risk on some of the repayment but not all of it

ShellyBoobs · 07/10/2011 16:43

HSBC are still offering remortgages to 2.49% on a tracker with no fees and free valuation, if your LTV is 60% or less.

I thought about changing our 5.63% fix to that but the mortgage is tiny really so after the 3% ERC we wouldn't save more than a few hundred over the next 2 years.

The only reason I even think about it is that it really irks to be paying any more than absolutely necessary to a bank regardless of the negligible saving. Grin

Original poster
bibbitybobbityhat · 07/10/2011 16:52

Shelly, our ltv is 33% but dh is self employed so we are going to find it very difficult to remortgage anyway Sad - but that HSBC deal looks really good!

OP posts:
ouryve · 07/10/2011 16:59

That's the risks with fixing, specially if the rate you fix at is very low. We only fixed for 2 years when we bought this house and have stuck with a discounted tracker rate, since. The last house I bought, in the late 90s when interest rates were quite high and fixed rates had huge get out fees, I went for a capped variable rate which wasn't as cheap on the surface, but had lower associated fees, so actually worked out very good value and protected us against the slight rise that occurred as the late 90s boom happened.

CatIsSleepy · 07/10/2011 17:04

we fixed for ten yes ten years before the interest rates started to drop. can't even remember which blinking year it was. 2007 maybe? 5.28%.
But you know what, I don't think about it, I just don't. There's no point!

stripeybump · 07/10/2011 17:13

I think I win - no-one has a higher rate than me at 6.9% Grin

( Sad )

scaryteacher · 07/10/2011 17:17

I'd love a capped variable come January when the fix ends. We go onto the lenders SVR for mortgages taken out before 2008, so a lower SVR than they offer otherwise. Will have to ring broker to see what is around.

pointydog · 07/10/2011 17:18

Let it go, bibbs.
Forgeddaboutit.
You win some, you lose some.

I just stick to variable these days because two times out of three the fixed deal will be a pig in a poke.

Northernlurker · 07/10/2011 17:19

Taking out a fixed rate thinking you will SAVE money is imo a non-starter. The point of fixing is to know exactly what you will need to pay out. Dh and I have fixed twice in our 13 year history as house buyers and we have 18 months left on our current fix which we got when we moved in 2008. At that time we were takeing on a bigger mortgage with two dcs in after school care and one at nursery. We were very wary of rate rises (children of the late 70s/80s as we are) and the fixed rate has given us security whilst we have these other heavy expenses. Yes you could get our mortgage cheaper but not have the assurance we have. Our mortgage was affordable and remains affordable and that's all I'm bothered about.

sparkle12mar08 · 07/10/2011 17:20

We went for a 0.5% above base offset in 2002 and I am eternally grateful. Offsets aren't for everyone, but for anyone with a certain amount of capital in the bank they are a brilliant choice.

FunnysInTheGarden · 07/10/2011 17:22

we bought ourselves out of a 6% fixed rate 2 years ago. the penalty was £15k but since then we have saved over £36k so it was really worthwhile. We agonised a bit at the time, but really really gald we did it now. Our tracker is 1.8% over base.