Mortgages

I think percentages confuse some people. I’ve had to explain the difference in real terms of lowering your mortgage rate to a few friends.

It’s an old trick in negotiation training where you ask someone the following:

If you usually charge a client a rate of 20% and they are asking to pay 15% instead, how much % discount are they seeking?

You’d be surprised how many people say 5%. 

Chopping it off the term of the mortgage is the best way to do it, it's an odd way to think about it, but you've basically given yourself a big pay rise for a year or so when you're in your 50's/60's

Do providers have to accept overpayments? How do you sort it? For example, can i email and say, thanks for the percentage cut but can i retain the repayments as they were before?

Or could i hypothetically email and ask to pay 100 extra a month say?

We got our rate lowered by .25% by virtue of having a KBC current account.  That account can’t exist when they feck off but can’t figure out if BOi have to honour that reduction 

I ended up doing this too. Switching is complicated for me as Fingal CC have a small charge on my apartment. It only kicks in at an amount way above my mortgage now, but the Broker told me Avant probably wouldn't accept me for a switch and it would be very complicated with other lenders. So I've just stayed with EBS, and fixed for 5 years at 2.75%.

I was going to pay a lump sum off from some savings, but then I thought I may get a notion to travel, or whatever, the next few years, so best to have money available now, particularly with inflation beginning to impact. The interest paid over 35 years is colossal, but on the other hand, once it goes into the mortgage, that's it, you can never retrieve it. I can cope with the payments now and live okay. I would be in a much tighter situation if rates jumped say +2% quickly in the next year. With inflation, salaries will probably jump a bit over the next couple of years and so reduce my percentage outgoing on the mortgage. 

I'm happy to be locked in at this rate now too.

The 2.1% green rate would be fantastic, but I'm about C2 BER and it wasn't simple to get to a B3 BER.

Your post settled my mind a bit as I was thinking everyone is switching. Thanks!