Update March 2009: The three year fixed part of our mortgage ran out recently. Thanks in part to the advice from the site reviewed below we’ve reduced our mortgage by an extra £20,000 now and expect to pay off our 25 year mortgage (22 years left) in well under 10 years from now saving a LOT of interest payments.

Right now waiting to see what happens with the UK base rate so on a variable rate mortgage, when I’m confident the base rate won’t drop any more (currently 0.5%) I’ll get another 3 year fixed rate deal to lock in a low rate while using the tips in the ebooks I bought to reduce the overall loan amount long term (which reduces interest paid overall, that’s how you pay your mortgage faster, you still have to pay the initial amount lent).

We’ve found Mortgage Loan Tips Ebook particularly helpful.

Update end.

We own a large ex guesthouse close to the sea (Lincolnshire coast, UK) which we are slowly renovating, our home (we live at the property) is over four floors and originally included:

6 bedrooms on the top two floors with a sink each.
2 bathrooms on the top two floors (standard 3 piece suite).
On the ground floor there’s 2 living rooms, a small toilet/shower room (for guests when it was a guesthouse) and for the last owners of the guesthouse a private living area consisting of: medium size kitchen, small bedroom with on suite toilet/shower.
In the basement there was a large living type room with a small bar, a large dining room, medium/large kitchen (made from a large extension) and 2 toilets (one had the toilet removed and was used as a store).

When we purchased the property it was in need of some renovation (basically most internal fittings) and we’ve been renovating from the basement upwards turning this property into our home for a family of five (myself, my wife and our three sons aged 17, 14 and 11 years old).

Our Children can pay the Mortgage :)

You might say that’s a big house for an average size family, but think about how property prices tend to rise long term, when our children settle down if they can not afford a home of their own they can live with us comfortably medium term and as a thank you they can pay our mortgage: I wish, I know my wife wouldn’t let me do that :).

Put it this way, eldest son plans to study (University to study Computer programming) so won’t have money for ages, second son wants to work with animals (rescue them sort of stuff), again no money in scraping up road kill! and our youngest son is the artist of the family (enough said, not one entrepreneur!).

I can see us having all three of them with a family of their own living with us for a long time all sponging off Dad!!!!!!!!!!

Our Fixed Rate Mortgage

We paid a large deposit of £36,000 (around $72,000) with a 3 year fixed rate mortgage which we got through a free mortgage broker that I found online.

Interestingly the first mortgage offer our mortgage broker found fell through despite the large deposit because the mortgage company was concerned we might open the property as a guesthouse.

This wasn’t possible as a previous owner had gone through planning permission for it to be treated as a standard house (to open as a guesthouse would mean some kind of planning permission, not exactly sure what is needed as have no interest in running a guest house).

Our next mortgage offer came from a mortgage company that had no problem with the property and we took out a mortgage with a 3 year fixed rate offer: first mortgage offer (that fell through) was a 2 year fixed rate mortgage, so glad the 1st mortgage fell through considering how mortgage rates have gone up since then (saved us some money)!

Our 3 year fixed rate mortgage will be ending soon (ending in the sense we no longer get the low fixed percentage rate) and so will be looking for a new mortgage deal through our mortgage broker and see if we can’t reduce the loan amount through legal means.

Have been buying and studying various ebooks about reducing mortgages with an aim to paying of our mortgage as quickly as possible without having to throw every penny I make at it (my wife doesn’t work and I’m self employed, I’m the only person in the household making money, so need some money free for emergencies) and here’s what we found.

BTW had my son (the wannabe computer programmer) run up an online mortgage calculator, I’ve found it helpful in determining what might happen if…. see our mortgage calculator (it’s free).

Mortgage Cycling Revealed

Checkout Mortgage Cycling Revealed website which includes an affiliate program for webmasters through ClickBank looking to promote a quality mortgage product.

Blurb from the Mortgage Cycling Revealed program website:

“Learn How To Quickly Build At Least $40,000 Worth Of Home Equity And Pay Your Mortgage Off In 10 Years Or Less”

Without Making Biweekly Mortgage Payments or Changing Your Current Mortgage.

When I first read this I was very skeptical, I didn’t know much about reducing a mortgage beyond paying more each month or paying bi-weekly payments and had never heard the terms like “Mortgage Cycling” or “Home Equity Line Of Credit” (HELOC).

After reading the information (last week) it sounds very exciting and possible to knock years of my mortgage saving thousands of pounds in the process, but the information supplied is for USA home owners, so not sure it is applicable to UK home owners like us (more research needed, will update when I know).

If it is I’m 99% sure we’ll be following this general strategy, can’t use it until the fixed rate part of our mortgage is over as will be hit with penalties, so just waiting for the mortgage to become a Variable Rate Mortgage VRM: in the USA you call these Adjustable Rate Mortgages ARM.

Based on what I read we could pay off our mortgage in under 10 years and save at least £20,000!

Buy Mortgage Loan Tips

I’ve read more ebooks etc… and have more recommendations to make, but tired right now so will leave it for another day. Might even write them up as single reviews.

If anyone has any mortgage product recommendations we should review please make a comment. We’ve still got 6 months before our mortgage goes variable rate, so got plenty of time to do research to find the very best approach long term.

David Law