Does a pint of milk last longer than a mortgage deal?
Darren Cook, Head of Press at Moneyfacts.co.uk, comments:
“Households across the UK have got their morning routine of a fresh cup of tea and a bowl of cereal down to a fine art. The shelf life of a pint of milk is between eight and fifteen days and for most of us it’s readily available and in durable packaging, with healthy benefits for us all.
“You’d also expect these households that are currently considering a mortgage, one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives, to be able to take longer than this to consider the options available…but this is not the case.
“Up to date research by Moneyfacts shows that the average shelf life of a mortgage deal is down from 30 days a year ago to just 11 days now.
“Last year, there were over 15,000 mortgage products on offer and customers were spoilt for choice: providers kept their mortgages on their books on average for 30 days at a time. Now there are just 3,814 products available. According to Moneyfacts Mortgage Metrics, the average new mortgage is around for only 11 working days; indeed, last month when Bank Base Rate fell by 0.25%, new deals came and went within a staggering six days.
“I believe banks and building societies are being forced into these measures due to current market uncertainty. As a consequence, they are reducing the level of funds on offer, even though demand has not reduced. Lenders with products available are experiencing unprecedented levels of demand, which impinge on their back room staff’s ability to cope and on the company’s capacity to provide a good level of service. To avoid this, lenders are choosing to withdraw their products quicker than before in order to clear their demand bottlenecks.
The way forward?
“This news is not encouraging for the 1.4 million individuals (source: FSA) who are expected to remortgage their homes this year, when their existing short term fixed rate deals expire. Many of these have tried to plan ahead to make the transition between mortgage deals less financially traumatic. Unfortunately, until the current market readjustment is complete, the ability to time the mortgage market has become more of a lottery than an art, with the majority of today’s better deals expected to have disappeared by this time next week.
“Those individuals should first access a reliable mortgage data website, record and continually monitor between 10 and 20 suitable mortgage products. This will enable them to see the potential difference in cost between their old and new deals and its affect on their overall household budget. Most importantly, it will allow them to access the mortgage market with the confidence to make an informed choice.”
Moneyfacts Group
Moneyfacts is the UK’s leading independent provider of personal financial information and our data is used and trusted throughout the financial industry.
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