Share the things you wish you’d known before getting a mortgage with Habito - £300 voucher to be won! NOW CLOSED

[JustineBMumsnet]

Whether you’re buying for the first time, moving house or remortgaging, getting or changing a mortgage can be a daunting, time-consuming and confusing experience. Online mortgage broker Habito would like you to share the things that – with hindsight – you wish you’d known before getting a mortgage.

Here’s what Habito have to say: “Habito is the world’s first digital mortgage broker. It searches the entire market and enables you to apply online for a mortgage or remortgage quickly all online without any cost”

So, if there’s anything you wish that you’d known before you decided to take the plunge and get a mortgage, share this below.

Also, if you’re considering getting a mortgage or remortgaging, feel free to head over to Habito and see if they could help.

All those who post a comment on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher for a store of their choice (from a list).

Thanks, and good luck!

MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs Apply

Never touch an Endowment mortgage!

I felt so naive taking out my first mortgage, and did not know which of the options on offer to take, I chose a fixed rate for 5 years as apposed to a tracker mortgage which I know now would have been much cheaper, but as you cannot predict the future, I thought the fixed rate was better as I would be able to ensure I could pay my monthly payments without any increases which would mean more 'belt tightening'. I am on year 4 now and looking forward to reducing my outgoings next year and I am keeping a careful watch on mortgage rates. I would be fixed to a rate so long again .

dont buy a flat previously owned or part owned by the council!! £10k to re do the 'electrics' and even private owners had to pay their share (yes 10k EACH). Also services charges for the hallways are ridiculous - 3k a year to paint it and replace the light bulbs!

I wish I'd got on the property ladder sooner as well, although they said I enjoyed my lifestyle renting places I'd never been able to buy so possibly it was the right thing for us.

I actually wish we'd been braver and borrowed a bit more to buy a slightly bigger place - now the next step is so much more we couldn't afford to move and work to add space to this house would be tricky to do.

I worked in banking for 28 years giving mortgage information & always explained the pitfalls of an endowment mortgage. A lot of people were unwilling to change to a repayment mortgage back in the day but they regretted it when their endowment policy matured & there was insufficient to repay the mortgage. I love the current account mortgages where you combine all your accounts into one, by far the quickest & cheapest way to repay your mortgage but you need to be good at budgeting

I wish I'd learned more about fixed rate mortgages.

I was in such a rush to buy a house as we bought in the property boom every time we made an offer we would get outbid in the end we got so desperate to find a house as I was pregnant with our first child and needed a place to Live we ended up buying a house in a place that we didn't really know and am still regretting it now as I hate living where we live but we made a few mistakes over the years and are credit rating isn't good enough to get another one so we are stuck in the house we bought 15 years ago but as soon as the mortgage is finished I will be selling it and taking my time to buy our next home in an area we like and want to live it's a lesson learnt not to buy in haste and to keep my finances good I think the only decent thing to come from all of this is I got a repayment mortgage and not and interest mortgage as the bank were trying to get me to take out the latter and luckily I had good advice off my parents on which was best to for me.

I wish we'd known at the time that an endowment mortgage was risky and we could have ended up owing a lot of money. We've now changed to re-payment, which we're a lot happier with.

I wish I had researched all the different vocabulary used before seeing the mortgage advisor. There seemed to be so much jargon that I didn't understand.

I wish I'd understood interest rates more, it's all very confusing.

Always consider what your repayments will be if the interest rate goes up. Don't push yourself too hard, start off with a cheaper property and work your way up, too many people nowadays seem to want it all right now.

I wish I hadn't added on more money when we remortgaged as it would have been nearly paid for now! You just don't think of the extra amount you are paying back when you are younger !

I have done reasonably well over the buying and selling of 4 homes but:
I wish I had learned earlier to take an interest in how it is all interconnected; I had a mortgage against a pension for a while without having investigated all the tax implications.
I wish I had realized that I could have switched earlier to a repayment mortgage, while still paying the endowment (which was in the end a handy nest egg that had done not too badly, but I could have switched earlier)
In the early days I was quite swayed by confident-talking brokers.
Our most recent Smart Mortgage was a smart move. We have done all sorts to use it to the max: use an interest free credit card for ALL expenditure , while keeping the balance in an account that counts against the mortgage, etc.

I wish I had known the market was about to crash before I committed myself to a large mortgage as I bought at the peak of the market and the interest rate was higher than it would have been if I had waited

I wish I'd have looked into the together mortgage better before I signed up. I didn't realise that If I move my mortgage account from NRAM the interest rate on the loan side can go up to 17% !!!

I didnt realise the difference the LTV rate made to the interest rates you would be offered - therefore the bigger the deposit the better!

When we took out our mortgage, we used a company recommended by a friend, not especially considering interest rates.

I wish we had realised that if we had compared mortgage interest rates, we would have saved £1000s over the course of the 25-year term.

I wish we'd bought younger rather than renting.

Our Endowment was something in hindsight we should not have done, hate to think what we will end up with compared to what we were promised.

Wish we'd saved up a bigger deposit before buying our house - would have saved us so much money in loan to value repayments! Also to check that your mortgage allows overpayments - luckily ours does but that was more luck than us checking.

I should have took my time to read through everything carefully and not think that it would be easy

Do your research to see if the lenders you are considering pass on the drops in interest rates, some do not always do this yet they hike them when then increase... If you are good with money consider a all in one mortgage tied in with your bank account, do not consider this is you are not! :)

Overpay as much as you can even a few pounds as it pays dividends.

I wish I had known just how much it costs if you want to move your mortgage!

I wish I'd known that leaving a fixed term mortgage costs a lot of money. And that interest rates were going to go down again.