Last Updated on: 21st November 2023, 10:50 pm
The current housing market seems to be quite unsteady due to all the uncertainty the UK is facing with Brexit and people seem to be looking to re-mortgage their properties, either to make home improvements or simply just to find a better mortgage deal out there and hopefully reduce their monthly mortgage repayments. Steve Hobbs, Regional Director of Mortgage Arrangers recently mentioned, “We’ve seen a steady rise in the run up to Brexit of both homeowners and buy to let landlords looking to re-mortgage their properties to find a more competitive deal.” There are some common misconceptions for homeowners looking to remortgage and you may find this ultimate remortgage guide useful which provides clear simple answers to questions such as ‘what is a remortgage?’.
When making these changes, people seem to also be going for the fixed rate options for at least 5 years as the interest rates have recently gone up from 0.5% to 0.75% which meant those on variable rate mortgages saw their monthly mortgage repayments increase almost instantly. Being on a fixed rate, should interest rates go up again (which all are predicting they will do once Brexit actually happens), your mortgage monthly repayments would stay the same as the rate is fixed. Although you may pay more initially, you may be better off in the upcoming uncertain years as you do not know what they could increase to, should the interest rates rise again. It pays to look around and find a lender which can give you lower rates and lower monthly repayments than you are paying now. It may be best to go to a mortgage broker for this as they can look around for you and search all those that are on their database, or if you do not mind searching yourself and filling in the paperwork, why not try some mortgage comparison sites and see what comes up? Some of these comparison sites will show you deals that mortgage brokers do not have access to and you will not have to pay the broker a fee by doing it yourself! You may be pleasantly surprised at how much you could be saving over the year.
Another excellent reason to remortgage is to make home improvements to your current property. You may want to extend, do some landscaping to your front and back gardens, new kitchen or bathroom, new carpets, the list is endless…we are always making changes to our homes especially in regard to décor as what is ‘in’ changes all the time and by remortgaging to borrow a little more at the moment seems like a good idea to hopefully also increase the value of your property when you do go to sell one day.
The housing market has seen a recent slump and property values for the first time in a very long time seem to be going down rather than up. Depending on how the deal goes with Brexit, some banks are predicting values may go down further. So remortgaging to do these home improvements whilst the uncertainty of the economy as a whole looms is a good idea. Whilst the Pound has not really seen much instability as yet, the whole uncertainty regarding the currency at present is very unstable as no one really knows at this stage of Brexit negotiations what is going on and exactly what will happen.
Hopefully, come this time next year, things will all have settled down and by then we will know what will have happened and how the property market will be at the time. Your home improvements will have increased the value of your property we hope and you will be making a profit should you wish to sell and move on.
