Fixed mortgage ends in 2024 - anyone?

[poldark7]

My fixed mortgage deal ends in a February 2024 cries it's only 1.99% at the moment so I'm dreading it.

I'm looking at the rates going up and and up and my god, it's only going to get worse.

Is anyone else in the same boat with a deal ending in 2024, and what are you doing? Waiting it out or paying a fee to exit your deal early?

We're waiting, i wouldn't pay the early exit fee. It will be what it'll be, we've done worst case (hopefully) calculators and plan to start working to budget that amount so we build up to it so it isn't such a shock

Our deal is up in June 2024 (1.84%). We’ll start looking in Jan24 and lock in the cheapest we can find but keep looking.

We’re already cutting back on spending & an holiday which I guess is the goal of Bank of England to bring down inflation.

I was in your position 6 months ago. We spoke to a mortgage broker and they suggested this:

• take out the best deal you can right now but don’t execute (deal 1)
• 6 months before your current deal is due to expire take out the best deal possible with your current lender (deal 2) again it won’t execute
• deal 1 will only last 6 months so in Nov / Dec; you can assess if you want to keep this / pay the erc or let it lapse

Wait until the end of the year, you will then have 3 deals to choose from, both above plus a new potential deal if the rates have dropped.

Look at extending your term if you need to bring down the payments 25years to 30 years etc.

Forgot to add for deal 2 with your current lender you can normally cancel it and get another deal no issues. I secured 3 different deals when the rates came down slightly so cancelled and re did the deal no issues. I was checking weekly for a while to make sure I got the best possible rate

Ours is up dec 2024..so we’re hoping things might be better by then. Agree with above- keep an eye on rates and agree to the best one to keep in the back burner..
it is shit- we’re 0.9 atm so will really notice it.

Definitely keep your current deal as long as you can.

However, you can prepare for it by working out what your mortgage will cost with an interest rate of 5/6/7% and if you can, live your life as if it costs that much now, or build up to it if it's too big a step to plunge into now.

Save all the extra money and when your current deal ends, pay off what you've saved as it will reduce your new mortgage by a little bit, and save some interest. So if your mortgage is currently £800 pm and it's going to go up to £1300 pm, start to save £500 pm from now on and you'll have an extra £3k to reduce your mortgage balance with.

Also review your finances to see what they'll look like with a £500 pm bigger mortgage payment and make cutbacks if you need to.

Ours is up in November so we did the six month look about. We got one that meant we are only paying £200 more ( we own a fair amount of our house though ). So we have that reserved for nov. It was lucky we did it that day as the next day it was gone.

Our 5-year fix ends next September. We only bought our house in 2019 and current mortgage is 2.1% so it’s really going to sting. Looking at around a £500pm increase.

We sat down this weekend and looked seriously at our finances and I do feel a bit better about it now, although still slightly panicky! We can cut back on a few things, and also realised our sofa payments finish next year, and our car will be paid off in early 2025. We also both pay £100ish a month for non-essentials that we could definitely cancel next year.

We will start looking as soon as we can and lock something in, but still keep looking. We won’t pay the early repayment charge as it’s almost £4k!

Mine was up this month so I paid the ERC in November last year and took out a ten year fix. This was before they changed the rules so mortgage companies have to let people lock in deals six months beforehand. It's just me paying the mortgage so I couldn't risk having it go up by stupid amounts.

Yes. Ours is up August 2024. We're currently paying 2.5%.
No idea what we're going to do 😫

In your shoes I'd use a repayment calculator to see what you'd be paying at today's rates and see if you can live as though you had to pay that now. Save the excess in a high interest account. Then when the time comes to remortgage you'll be used to paying this amount and you'll have a little emergency fund as a bonus. This exercise will also tell you if its simply impossible at those rates and if so you'll have a head start on deciding what to do: change jobs/ look at downsizing etc etc.

That's great advice @PerfectYear321 and pretty much what we are about to do. I've started applying for new jobs as we just don't have enough slack.

Ours is also up in feb 2024 so I think august is the earliest we can lock in a new deal? With Skipton and it doesn’t seem clear if the deal starts at the end of your current one and is able to be cancelled if rates fall. Really don’t fancy trying to remortgage elsewhere and risk affordability check drama. So scary.

If you can find a mortgage with an overpayment facility AND extend the length of your mortgage. We added another 10 years to the mortgage which brought the monthly rate down. We then calculated (thanks Martin Lewis) how much to overpay to mean we finish off paying the mortgage at the same time as before.
However, it gives us the flexibility not to pay or pay less if we can't afford it on an expensive month.

March 2024 here. Hugely regretting not taking out a longer fix, it was just 2 years as we were thinking of moving but haven't.

@smilesup that's very interesting! I feel like there should be a downside??

I think @visorcleaner the downside is that you have a mortgage for longer and therefore paying more interest etc IF you don't overpay. That's the kicker, you need the discipline to actually pay it off quicker unless there's an emergency for the overpay money. If you can overpay, it's a brilliant idea to give you more flex and control.

Same here on 1.49% and I'll be a single mum working part time and paying for nursery when it ends 😕

Thank you @whereeverilaymycat

Unfortunately that discipline can sometimes be lacking when there's so many other things competing for that money, and when you know you don't 'have' to overpay....