We're here to make information accessible to everyone, so we've pulled together a few terms that may be unfamiliar to some and made them easy to understand.
What is a deposit?
This is a lump sum of money that you have saved up that will be paid up front when buying a property.
What is an LTV?
LTV stands for Loan to Value. This is a percentage that is worked out by comparing how much you are intending to borrow to the purchase price of your new property. E.g. You are purchasing a property worth £100,000, you have a deposit of £20,000 and need to borrow £80,000. This works out as an LTV of 80%.
What are early repayment charges?
If you exceed an overpayment limit on your product, a charge will apply to any amount that exceeds this limit. This includes redeeming your mortgage early.
What are overpayments?
An Overpayment is any amount above your normal monthly mortgage repayment amount. Overpayment limits apply to some of our products. This means that within a product term, you have a maximum amount that you can repay over the amount of your usual monthly mortgage repayment, usually 10% in one year. If you exceed these overpayment limits, you will be subject to early repayment charges
What is an SVR?
SVR stands for Standard Variable Rate. This refers to our base rate of interest. When you select a mortgage product with us, a discount from this Standard Variable Rate will apply for the length of the product before reverting to the Standard Variable Rate by default unless a new mortgage product is selected.
What is a fixed rate?
A fixed rate refers to a guaranteed rate of interest up to a given date. e.g. you select a product that has an interest rate of 3%, this rate will not change until the expiry date given in the product details. This rate is not affected by any increase or decrease in our SVR (Standard Variable Rate).
What is a discount rate?
A discount rate is a percentage of discount from our SVR (Standard Variable Rate). e.g. if our base rate is 5.2% and you choose a product with a discounted rate of 2%, you will be paying an interest rate of 2% below our SVR, which would be 3.2%. If our SVR were to increase or decrease, the rate of interest you pay would still be 2% below whatever the rate was to become.
What is a floored rate?
Discount rates can be floored. This means that while the interest rate will be discounted from our SVR (Standard Variable Rate) it will not decrease any further below this floored rate if our SVR was to decrease. It may still increase though if our SVR increased.
What is a 'capital & interest' repayment type?
This method of repayment slowly brings down the total cost that is to be repaid over time as you are making contributions towards the total amount borrowed. A capital payment is calculated to be repaid monthly alongside an interest calculation to be repaid too.
What is an 'interest-only' repayment type?
This method of repayment allows you to just pay a monthly interest amount of the total balance borrowed. This keeps your monthly repayments low however, at the end of the mortgage term you will still need to repay the borrowed amount in full.
What is a representative example?
A representative example is used to show the typical costs that a product may come with. This information is generated internally using averages from our existing mortgage data.
What is a product fee?
A product fee is a charge that applies to some of our products as a one-off payment for the securing of the product. This fee can be paid on application, on completion of the mortgage or it can be added to the mortgage balance and repaid as part of your monthly payments. This option may be limited dependent upon LTV.
What is stamp duty?
Stamp duty is a tax that is payable by anyone purchasing a property over a certain value. The amount you pay is also dependent on other factors. These can be viewed on the Government website. This fee is dealt with by the solicitor prior to the completion of the mortgage.
What is portability?
This feature of a product means that if you were to move house while your current product is still in effect, you have the option to transfer this mortgage over to the new property and keep the current product. You would need to meet our credit and affordability requirements for the new mortgage, the new property would need to be acceptable to us, and approval of a new mortgage would be subject to our prevailing Lending Policy.