Killer Mortgage Deals and How to Get Them

First Published: ADawnJournal.com March 13, 2010

The best mortgage deals available on the market are often ones that go unnoticed by a majority of potential customers. With a mortgage market as wide as it is – even in the financial difficulties that have become a global issue at this point – there is not only an increased level of competition for the few customers who feel brave enough to go out and borrow to buy a house, but also a real sense of being spoiled for choice. Invariably, even those potential borrowers who see fit to shop around for the best deal will find themselves getting a kind of “variety fatigue” which leaves them wondering whether they shouldn’t just take the best of the several potential deals they have already seen – even if it means missing out on an unseen gem.

Reaching for the best available deal on the market means really looking for one that satisfies all your needs, one for which you will not find it problematic to meet payments on a monthly basis, and ideally one that moves to take account of changing realities so that you do not become tied to a deal which looked good three or four weeks ago, but will leave you out of pocket in three of four years. There are various ways of going about this. Some people would say that you shouldn’t spend too long looking – just find a deal that you are happy with, which looks strong today and will maintain that strength, and not worry too much about whether you’ve missed a better deal. Others disagree.

The message from the latter group is that you owe it to yourself to get the best deal possible. Sure, a good mortgage deal will be beneficial for you, but a great one will continue to benefit you, will benefit your family and will continue to serve you well for the life of the account. You may well find at the end of it that you are able to pay it off in full earlier than you had expected. How do you find such a deal, though, if you do not know what it is or where to find it? How do you look for something which you don’t even know exists?

The first port of call is to check mortgage calculators and comparison sites. The Internet has seen a rapid rise in both of these over the course of recent years. The Internet is truly a consumer paradise in many ways because of the vast range that it covers. If you look closely enough in enough places, there is virtually no financial deal that is not covered on the World Wide Web. Trawling a number of comparison sites – ideally two or three, or even more – will give you an appreciation of what kind of deals are being offered. If all of the deals you see are from banks you are fully aware of, however, it may also be worth hitting the streets to see what is on offer from the smaller, more independent banks. With greater freedom to set their own rates, they may just throw up the great deal you were looking for.

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