Refinancing your home loan

When it's usually worth looking

Your fixed rate is ending. Your loan is more than two years old. Your income or your household has changed. You've built equity and want to use it. You're carrying expensive debt that could be restructured. Or you simply haven't checked, ever.

When it usually isn't

Break costs on a fixed loan can outweigh the saving, and if you're planning to sell within a year the switching costs may not be recovered.

And if life has changed since you first borrowed — your income, your work, your health, or a stretch where repayments were tight — please don't assume that rules refinancing out. Very often it doesn't. What helps most is knowing early and honestly what's happened, so we can approach a lender who'll look at the whole picture rather than one who'll stop at the first thing they see. Whatever it is, I've almost certainly seen it before, and there's usually a way through it.

Your current lender is worth a conversation

Before we assume you need a new lender, it's worth seeing what your current one will do. Retention pricing is real, and sometimes one phone call achieves what a whole application would.

If you're already a client of mine, I can approach them for you. If you're not, most lenders will ask you to speak to their retention team yourself — so I'll tell you exactly what to ask for and what a good outcome looks like, so you're not going in cold. Either way, staying put with a better rate is a perfectly good result.

What it actually costs

Discharge fees from the outgoing lender, government registration fees, and possibly an application or valuation fee at the new lender. Sometimes a cashback offer covers the lot. You'll see the full numbers before deciding, not just the headline rate.

How long it takes

Usually four to eight weeks from start to settlement. Most of that is lender assessment and the outgoing lender releasing your loan — the discharge is often the slowest part and it sits outside anyone's control, though the chasing is mine to do. If you're working to a deadline, tell me early and we'll factor it into which lender we approach.