Remortgage and redundancy

[seizethecuttlefish]

Looking for some advice. I've been offered voluntary redundancy. It's a good package and the timing is good except for 1 thing. Our fixed rate mortgage comes to an end in December. We have been to overpaying it and will have about 160k left on a house valued at 240. My husbands salary means I don't think we could remortgage in his name only. We have done the maths and my redundancy money will last at least 3 yrs (I'm planning to retrain). Any ideas or suggestions? The only thing I can think is just to go to the standard rate but with the increase coming, I'm a bit worried.

If the mortgage doesn't end until December it gives you quite a while to find another job or were you planning to not work for a bit? Theoretically you could find a new job and quit as soon as the remortgage is done if you're happy you can afford the payments on one wage. You'll probably need to be out of your probation period before you do the mortgage application to give you a wider range of products to choose from.

Could you change to a different mortgage now? You'll get stung for early repayment charge -most likely 1% or 1.6k but that's a small price to pay to fix elsewhere for, say, 5 years and not worry about it while you're retraining.

If you stay with your existing lender you probably won't have to reapply - just switch products automatically.

If you pick a deal with your current provider - usually just a case of picking your rate online - they won't ask you for any info so it some matter.

It's only if you want to add more money to the loan or change the term they'll do checks again.

Who are you with?

If you are keeping the same length of term and same amount of mortgage then most lenders just let you switch to a new deal. No credit checks or anything.
We were in the same position last year. DH was made redundant just as our fixed rate ended and I work part time. We switched deals, no checks and it ended up being £100 a month cheaper due to the drop in rates. We are with Halifax.

Thanks. We're with platform. Last time we remortgaged DH had just started a new job. We seem to have a theme here. I'm planning to take a while off and eventually retrain, so the best option would be to stay with them. I assumed they would just put us on their variable rate but if I can fix, that'd be good.

We're with Platform and I was looking at this EXACT thing the other day because I've gone part time since we took out the mortgage.

According to their website (and my understanding) if you are doing a product change then unless you are doing it and taking advice through a FA or through them then they don't check affordability. I looked at their rates and if the rates were the same when our current product ends as they are now, then we'd be about £100/month better off. Unlikely for us as we don't need to change products for another 3 years but possibly good news for you. They have a pdf on their website with all the rates so you can work out what you'd want to switch to.

Thanks so much. It's been worrying me since I heard about the redundancy. The timing is perfect in every other way.