Property Investing

It is strange what information you come across when you are reading a paper or browsing the web, but this recent story even startled me.

According to research by mortgage advisors John Charcol, more than 28% of the UK property market does not know the size or cost of their mortgage rates, whilst a further 50% doesn’t know when their existing mortgage deal is going to end.

And I have to confess that this figure worried me. How can you genuinely not know this information about your mortgage? It is the biggest debt you will ever have. No other will compare… Yet it would appear that many homeowners become clueless to this information once the deal is signed.

What is more alarming for me though is the number of property investors who are probably caught up in these statistics and who are losing out on the best mortgage deals in the industry because they don’t know any better.

The size of your repayments plays a fundamental part in influencing your positive cash flow. The smaller your interest rate, the smaller your monthly repayments will be. And the smaller your monthly repayments are, the bigger your positive cash flow will be after your payments have been deducted.

And it is not like this property information is not available. I regularly receive updates from my lender, roughly once a year, detailing how much I have paid off and what my mortgage deal will default to when my existing deal ends.

But it would seem that many homeowners and even property investors too are dismissing this information…

Now if you are reading this and cannot honestly answer the following, then I thoroughly recommend that you get your property documentation out and refresh yourself. You never know… you might be at a stage in your mortgage where you can switch to a better deal:

• What is the size/cost of your mortgage rate?
• How much do you pay in repayments every month?
• When does your existing mortgage deal end?
• What will your default mortgage rate be?
• What is the term of your mortgage?

Wendy xx