Talk to me about remortgaging..

Do you have enough equity to remortgage?

Do I have enough what now?

Do you mean remortgage to take equity out of the house and therefore owe more capital? Or do you mean just switch to a new mortgage now your two year introductory rate is finished and you are in the SVR?

Equity is the value of the house minus what you owe to the mortgage man.

How much is the house worth vs how much do you owe on the mortgage?

In order to remortgage, most lenders will require a certain level of equity. I'd be very surprised if you could remortgage with less than 15% if not more.

ETA: Some places will accept 10% I think.

Both Ducky.

Kharv- We bought our house as a repossession therefore got it for a lot less that it's worth which will help us. I think we have 85% which does limit it us to certain lenders but think it's still doable?

We are in the process of remortgaging, but we do have a fair chunk of equity to release due to a putting down a big deposit to start with, and overpaying ever since.

I think you need to sit down and work out if remortgaging is an option. If not, get yourself a meeting with an independent financial advisor to talk about what other mortgage options are availble that could reduce your monthly repayments.

Yes, it should be possible then

Fees - are similar to when you take out your first mortgage. Some will charge an admin fee of a few hundred, others won't. Some may charge for a house valuation but this is sometimes included in the price. Some may charge an arrangement fee.

What rate of interest are you currently paying?

When you remortgage, the lender will send someone to value your house. Whether you pay for this depends on the lender. They are notorious for down-valuing houses though, mainly to reduce risk.

Once they have valued the house, they will tell you what they are willing to lend. As a rule you can only remortgage 75% of the value of the property. Well, this is the figure we were quoted when looking for how to go about our remortgage. I'm not sure what is done when it is smaller amounts.

Remember there will be mortgage set up fees too, these can be a couple of grand sometimes! So it needs to be a fair amount of money released to make it worthwhile.

Kharv can clearly type faster than me!

Or I have less to do/can't be arsed to do it.

Gah I knew it wouldn't be straight forward It's something we are toying with and haven't discussed properly yet which is why I thought I would get some info from you lovely people first.

We pay 6.5% at the minute!

ON SVR?!

Looking at my mortgage lender (Coventry Building Society) they offer remortgages from 90%LTV so you should fit that.

Their rates start at 4.35% for that LTV with a £199 fee then an £800 arrangement fee that can be added to the mortgage. Valuation is included.

Or they do 4.9% where they remove the £800. You still have to pay the £199.

(Just had to google what svr meant! haha) You wouldn't have thought I sorted out our mortgage on my own would you! Yeh that's the standard fixed rate we paid, as I said we only had a low deposit as we were planning on waiting another year or so to save up but then this house came up at a bargainous price so went for a low deposit mortgage at high interest.

Thanks for finding that Kharv, I'd imagine that should save us a fair whack! In my search this morning, Cumberland building society came up as offering good rates for what we need but I'd never heard of them so wasn't sure.

Perhaps it's something we should look more into then, at least I know it should be possible.

Your SVR is your standard variable rate - this is the rate that your mortgage will revert to when you finish your fixed term.

Are you sure your fixed term is finished? Our mortgage was at 6.3% fixed term when we took it out in 2007 as it was the height of the market. When the fixed term came to an end our rate reverted to SVR at 4.79% which is what we're paying now.

Most SVRs should currently be quite low as the bank of england base rate is so low.

Who are you with and how many years fixed term did you take?

Just had a check on the details.

So we have a fixed rate of 6.39% until Aug 2013 then it goes down to variable rate of 6.19%.

We are currently with the Nottingham building society on a 3 year fixed term, obviously if we decide to change before August then we would have to pay an early repayment fee which we wouldn't do as it's not worth it.

That's a high SVR so I would definitely recommend reviewing your options for August onwards.

Have you had a look at Zoopla and other property valuation sites to get an idea of your LTV? Forewarned is forearmed and all that. They tend to undervalue and don't take into account improvements you've made since buying but can give you a rough idea of where you stand.

That's a good idea Kharv, thanks very much for your help (and Ducky too!)

No worries. You wouldn't think I'd never remortgaged would you? Ha!