Mortgage

[minestrone]

I know that some of the finest financial minds populate this forum, sacrificed a top job in the city to cut code in a cube.

If one would be looking for a 60% mortgage, fixed or tracker?

[eliquant]

fixed, all the good tracker ones got pulled hours after the Bank of England set the LIBOR low. Also if you go tracker consider the variable interest rate you would pay, what goes down must go up and that applies to the the Standard Variable Rate and any offset on a tracker.

With a 60% mortgage you 'should' be on the right side of one of the Loan To Value ratios of Fixed Interest Rate Mortgages, rule of thumb is that the lower the Loan To Value Ratio the lower the fixed interest rate will be.

Also I didn't swap my high flying city job for a cubicle, I still have my high flying
top City job and I work in a cubicle and feel partly responsible for the down turn, Gordon Brown are you reading this ?, pass the buck, don't pass Go, do not collect £200 you know the rest ...

[Gonzo]

I would say fixed, if nothing else at least you have certainty over the repayment amounts.

I am always one to have the "worst case scenario" at the back of my mind (which is probably why I might not achieve as much out of life as if I were more gung-ho, never mind).

It is easy to forget in the current low interest rate environment that the Bank of England rate (in those days set by the treasury) was 13% in November 1988, was up to 15% by October 1989. It stayed that way for one year and didn't go below 10% until the second half of 1992.

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/stati...s/baserate.pdf (SFW)

What is going to happen in the future? The main questions to consider are:

Is inflation dead or merely sleeping?

If it is merely sleeping, how dedicated to fighting it will the Bank of England be when it wakes up?

It would appear to me that despite inflation being the BofE's one supposed consideration when setting interest rates, that has in fact been a secondary consideration over the past nine months or so.

Then again, even if rates do eventually skyrocket - you might have paid off the mortgage by then in which case it wouldn't matter.

[swamp]

Go tracker. Take a chance!

[Cyberman]

Go for the cheapest deal which will certainly not be a fix. Interest rates will remain low for another year or so yet, so the SVR looks best until rates go up.

[ASB]

Depending on the value of the mortgage at the LTV the best I could find was base + 2.39 offset tracker with First Direct. Depends how soon you plan to pay it off. Short term Alliance and Liecester had some good deals a couple of months back.

[Fred Bloggs]

What's a mortgage? (Looks up "mortgage" on Wikipedia....) Oh yes, definitely a fixed rate jobby. Rates will be shooting up within 18 months once the wall of money that Mr Darling is printing works through to the high street. I expect inflation to be ~10% within 2 to 3 years.

[minestrone]

Looks like you can get 5 year fixed rate mortgages at about 4.5 from a very quick search, halifax and post office. Max 60% LTV rate which is ideal.

I can also see interest rates going through the roof in 2 years so a 5 year would be ideal.

[Fred Bloggs]

We fixed @ 4.54% with Britannia for 10 years and it ended in January 2009. I think that 4.5% is a pretty good bet over the longer term, I reckon you'll come out on top with that and in the meantime you'll know exactly how much you'll be paying.

[Bagpuss]

We fixed @ 4.54% with Britannia for 10 years and it ended in January 2009. I think that 4.5% is a pretty good bet over the longer term, I reckon you'll come out on top with that and in the meantime you'll know exactly how much you'll be paying.

That doesn't make sense, the Britiania's fixed rate 10 years ago was circa 5.55% (with a much higher APR of around 7%). The BOE base rate was 6%.