Refinancing your property

What a refinance can and cannot do

You can generally refinance up to 80% of your property value. The new mortgage pays out the old one, plus whatever else you direct it to pay out — credit cards, a line of credit, a car loan, tax arrears — and the balance comes to you.

The arithmetic that matters is not the rate. It is the total interest you were paying on the debts being consolidated, against the total interest on the larger mortgage over the years it will now take to repay them, plus any penalty to break your current term. Sometimes that is a clear saving. Sometimes it stretches a three-year problem across twenty-five years. We will show you both numbers.

The penalty question

Breaking a fixed-rate mortgage mid-term usually triggers an interest rate differential penalty, and lenders calculate it very differently from one another. On a variable it is more often three months of interest. Before anything else we will get your exact payout figure from your current lender in writing.

If the penalty swallows the benefit, a second mortgage or a home equity line behind your existing first charge may cost less than breaking it. That is a real comparison we run, not an upsell.

Qualifying again

A refinance is a new approval. Your income, credit and the property are all underwritten again, and the qualifying rate applied is higher than the rate you will actually pay. If your circumstances have changed since you last qualified — self-employment, a leave, a new dependant — tell us at the start rather than at the condition stage.