Remortgaging – changing your mortgage plan, not your home

Today, let’s start a new topic which is quite common practice for UK home owners – REMORTGAGING. Remortgaging means you change the mortgage plan, either switch to another mortgage plan from the same mortgage firm, or take a new mortgage scheme from another mortgage lending firm. In either case, your home remains intact – you only switch you mortgage plan or scheme on the same home or house.

Once you've gone through the process of finding your mortgage - you probably won't be in a great hurry to do it all again!
However, a year or two down the line, it can be an expensive mistake NOT to look around the mortgage market to see what's on offer. Mortgage lending firms work hard to attract new customers, but often aren't so good at making sure their current borrowers continue to get the best deal.

Should you look around now?
- If you're already on a special deal, then you should probably not worry about remortgaging. The penalties you'd have to pay to break the deal, and the other costs involved, may be quite high and it may mean there's no point in remortgaging.

- But if you're paying your lender's standard variable rate and there are no penalties involved you should certainly look at what else is on offer.

Find your most recent mortgage statement – your mortgage lender or mortgage firm will send you a statement once at least each year - which will tell you what you're paying now, and how much you still owe. It will also tell you where early repayment charges apply and the date they stop.

Are you getting a really good scheme to switch?
Use the information in your statement to compare your mortgage with others, both from your current lender and from other lenders. You can use any online Mortgage tables to compare features and rates.
You can then go directly to the lenders, or visit a mortgage broker and get a keyfacts document about this mortgage document for the mortgages you're interested in, so you can check you'll save money by switching.