We were featured in a piece by Caroline Madden in the Irish Times today titled ‘To Fix or Not to Fix‘ regarding mortgages. The mentions are below (italics ours)
The main points we are making are that firstly rates will go up for SVR’s and secondly that banks are making it hard to protect yourself with a fixed rate because they have increased fixed rates to the point where they don’t make sense.
Karl Deeter, operations manager at Irish Mortgage Brokers, says banks can pass some costs onto customers by charging for transactions or cheques, for example. There are other financial products they cannot re-price, however, such as tracker mortgages (which are set at a fixed margin above the ECB base rate), fixed mortgages and many hire purchase or personal loan contracts. This leaves variable-rate commercial loans and SVRs to bear the brunt of any pain, as these rates can be changed at the lender’s discretion.
Deeter points out that most banks have increased their fixed rates to the point where it is hard to see how savings can be made by fixing unless one switches lender to get a lower rate.
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