Remortgages

Remortgage - The Basics

If you have had a mortgage for a few years, then it is quite likely that you could save money by remortgaging your property.

Mortgage rates are still relatively low at present, so opportunities to reduce monthly mortgage repayments are available to many borrowers, simply because financial institutions are keen to retain their slice of the remortgage market.

In principle, a remortgage is a straightforward activity that involves exchanging your current mortgage for a lower cost mortgage option, either from your current lender or from an alternative mortgage provider.

Reasons to Remortgage
The most obvious reason to remortgage is to reduce your monthly outgoings. If the rate of interest on your existing mortgage is the mortgage provider's Standard Variable Rate (SVR), you can almost certainly obtain a more competitively priced mortgage, either from your current lender or from a rival financial institution. With a more competitive mortgage deal you would be able to reduce your monthly repayments. Alternatively, you could maintain your existing level of repayments which would allow you to pay off the mortgage over a shorter period of time.

Moving house can be an expensive business, so if you need more space, then extending your existing home is often cheaper than moving to a larger property (and less hassle). Remortgaging is an obvious way to raise the necessary finance to pay for a home extension.

A remortgage can also be a very effective way of raising cash, whether to consolidate existing debts at a lower rate of interest or to cover a large expense such as a child's wedding or university tuition fees and living costs.

Many financial institutions feature mortgage calculators on their websites, so it is very easy to carry out preliminary research on the probable costs of remortgaging, before having to decide which lenders would be the most suitable to approach.

Summary
Many financial institutions offer remortgage options;
you should be able to obtain a remortgage at lower cost than a Standard Variable Rate (SVR) deal;
remortgaging is a very useful way of reducing your outgoings or of raising extra cash.