What is a Flexible Mortgage?
Quite simply a flexible mortgage is a mortgage with some flexible features included. The flexible features include the ability to make overpayments, underpayments and sometimes the ability to take payment holidays if required. Some flexible mortgages will also have no early repayment charge meaning you can pay the whole loan off at any time.
Another feature a flexible mortgage might offer is the ability to offset savings. Here is the guide for further information about offset mortgages or they may offer a reserve account where you will have access to any over payments you may have made.
Advantages of a Flexible Mortgage
- If your financial situation improves, you have the option to pay off your mortgage faster with overpayments. This will reduce the total interest you will need to pay overall.
- On the other hand, if your financial situation worsens for a period, a fully flexible mortgage will allow you to pay less than your usual monthly payments or you could even take a payment holiday and pay nothing at all for an agreed period of time.
Disadvantages of a Flexible Mortgage
- It is very hard to compare flexible mortgages like for like as each lender’s version differs. Use our mortgage comparison tool to see which products are available.
- Typically there will be higher interest rate with a flexible mortgage.
Final considerations
It is important you research flexible mortgages well and choose the one that best suits your particular requirements. It is quite common for people to not actually use many of the flexible features that they have access to meaning a standard mortgage with a lower rate or fees would have been a better choice.
Before you decide to go ahead, make sure you are aware of all the mortgage options, which you can read about in our guide to mortgage types. Finally, at any time in the process of looking for a mortgage that will best suit your needs, you can contact one of our expert advisers here.
