Your deal ended. Let's fix that.

The six-month rule

The single most useful thing on this page: start looking six months before your deal ends.

Plenty of lenders will let you secure a new rate up to six months ahead, and you are generally free to switch again if things improve before it starts. Starting early means you are never left drifting onto your lender's standard variable rate by accident.

Doing nothing is a decision, and it is usually the expensive one. Your deal ends quietly, you move onto the SVR without a conversation, and the first you know about it is a payment that looks wrong.

Diarise it now. Six months before the end date, not six weeks.

What the SVR actually is

Your lender's standard variable rate is its default rate, the one you roll onto when a fixed or tracker deal finishes. It is usually higher than the deals available to switch to, and the lender can change it when it chooses.

Nobody chooses the SVR. People arrive on it by not acting, which is why the months before your deal ends matter so much.

Product transfer or full remortgage?

Two routes, and the right one genuinely varies.

A product transfer means taking a new deal with your existing lender. It is quick, there is usually no new legal work, and the affordability checks are often lighter. For plenty of people, especially anyone whose circumstances have become harder to evidence, it is the sensible answer.

A full remortgage means moving to a new lender. More paperwork, legal work involved, and a full assessment of your income. It opens up the rest of the market, and it is the route if you want to borrow more or change the shape of the loan.

What I will not do is tell you the second one is always better. Sometimes your own lender's offer is perfectly reasonable, and I will say so even though that is the outcome where I earn nothing. What matters is comparing the two properly rather than accepting the first letter that lands.

What has changed since you last did this?

More than you think, usually, and most of it in your favour:

• Your income may have risen, or changed shape if you have gone self-employed.
• Your property may be worth more, which can move you into a different loan-to-value band. That band is one of the biggest levers on what you are offered.
• Your credit file may have improved as old issues drop off.
• The balance is lower if you have been paying a repayment mortgage.
• Your life may look different: children, a partner moving in, a job change, a business.

Any of those can change what you qualify for. It is worth a proper look rather than assuming your situation is the same as it was two years ago.

Costs worth putting in the comparison

A lower rate is not automatically the cheaper deal. Factor in:

• Product fees, which can often be added to the loan, although adding them means paying interest on them
• Valuation fees, often covered by the lender on a remortgage
• Legal fees, which some lenders cover on a like-for-like remortgage
• Early repayment charges on your current deal, if you are moving before it ends
• Broker fees. Mine is £495, and it only becomes payable if we proceed to a full application

A lower rate with a large fee is sometimes worse than a slightly higher rate without one. It depends on the size of the loan, which is exactly the sort of sum worth doing before you commit rather than after.

Borrowing more at the same time

Remortgaging is a common moment to raise money for an extension, a loft, a new kitchen or consolidating other borrowing.

It can make sense, and it needs thinking about rather than assuming. Spreading a short-term debt over twenty-five years can reduce the monthly cost while increasing what you pay overall. Secured borrowing is also secured on your home, which unsecured borrowing is not.

I will set out what the options look like properly, including the downsides, so you can make the decision with the full picture.

While we are at it

Two things worth five minutes when your mortgage is already on the table.

Your protection. The cover you took out when you bought may not match the mortgage you now have, and old policies sometimes have terms worth keeping. Never cancel anything before new cover is accepted. More on the life and critical illness page.

The term. Shortening it where you can afford to, or lengthening it if money is tight, both change the shape of the thing. It is a lever people forget they have.

Common remortgage mistakes

Waiting for the letter. By the time it arrives, you may have weeks rather than months.

Accepting the first offer from your own lender without comparing. It might be fine. You will not know until someone looks.

Assuming you cannot move because of a change in circumstances. Self-employment, a new business, a credit blip. These narrow the field rather than closing it.

Forgetting the early repayment charge. Leaving a deal early can carry a cost that outweighs the benefit of moving.

Letting it drift because life is busy. This is the real one. It is a half-hour job that people put off for six months, and the SVR charges them for the delay.

If you want this in more depth, I have written it up properly in your first remortgage: how to avoid the SVR trap.