Interest rates have made our mortgage look good
The nice thing about the Bank of England’s recent bout of generosity dose of realism regarding interest rates is that we’re now paying far less interest on our mortgage than we were before re-mortgaging.
In fact we already were because we moved the whole thing onto a tracker deal that’s slightly below the Bank of England base rate for 2 years. The catch being that we had to pay a bit for it (I’m sure they called it something like an “arrangement fee”). It’s worked out rather well and there’s talk of interest rates dropping even lower than their current 3%. In principle if they go low enough, the bank will be forced to pay us to buy our home!
Unfortunately and probably for precisely that sort of reason, according to the BBC our mortgage lender won’t allow tracker mortgage rates to go lower than 3%. It’s probably all there on the agreement if I could be bothered to dig it out, but in common with most of the rest of the world I can’t and in any case, nobody foresaw rates dropping this low a year ago so nobody paid any attention to such details.
Am I aggrieved about that? Probably not - my own fault for not caring paying more attention, but I’m pretty sure there was no upper limit either, which would only be fair!
November 10th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Yee ha - the ol tracker gamble is really paying off for me too. I think I’m on it for another one or two years. I think I’ll give it at least another 6 months before I can be bothered to dig out the documents to find out exactly how long!
November 10th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Oh, can’t remember if I told you - I found out there used to be a lighthouse on the top of my flat!
I’m thinking of rebuilding it so maybe I should start a blog… For those of you who are interested it’s the other end of the Scrubs from Andre’s.
Here is the mock-up I made in photoshop when I first heard about it:
http://www.pistolero.demon.co.uk/lighthouse/lighthouse-mockup.jpg
I posted a printout of this to every house in the street asking if anyone remembered it. Three phoned me saying they remember it but that my picture looked nothing like it. One person came back saying that their neighbour thinks he might have a photo of it from about 1985 - a couple of years before it was taken down.
The photo evidence was stuck through my letterbox - taken from the opposite side:
http://www.pistolero.demon.co.uk/lighthouse/Lighthouse.jpg
I have been talking to the council about planning permission and the case is looking pertty strong with the photographic evidence. But I still don’t know the reason for it in the first place - any suggestions? I can’t see people on the canal needing navigation somehow.
November 10th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Bet you don’t get round to digging out those documents!
November 14th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Very nice Mr Bucanero.
I also recall that until not that many years ago the corner of your building was a bicycle shop.
I fear we may be veering wildly off topic!
November 14th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Hmm - there have been rumours in the past couple of days that the BoE might drop interest rates to 0%, which, if the Halifax didn’t have a floor of 3% really would mean that they’d have to pay me to keep up my mortgage.