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Hunting For A New Mortgage Is Much Harder Today Than 12 Months Ago.

With mortgage interest rates currently falling so quickly, you may be wondering if now is the time to swap mortgages to see if you can get yourself a better deal, which over the long term will save you money. But is this as safe to do as it was last year? Keith Lunt looks at how tricky this has now become.

Frankly, no. It is now far from easy to find yourself a new mortgage offer. The building societies have reacted to the current credit crisis by making it far harder to obtain a new mortgage and at the same time many of the building societies themselves are finding it harder to obtain the money they need for lending to borrowers. If they can’t get the money, they then have to further limit what they lend.

Many of the big building societies have now taken away their easy going dealsand are instead making it much harder for potential borrowers to take out a remortgage. They are putting huge boundaries around their remortgage deals that potential borrowers have to be able to climb before they stand any chance of obtaining a new mortgage.

Aside from the fact that a lot of the building societies have increased the basic remortgage charges, making remortgage far more expensive just to take out, many have taken away deals that would appeal to the borrowers the building societies are now worried about not being able to keep up repayments. They are securing themselves for the future by only accepting remortgage requests from those borrowers that they are convinced will always be able to pay back their remortgage. They are protecting themselves from the gamble they once used to take of risky lending in return for a high rate of return.

An example of this that is clear to see is the removal by the building societies of the 125% remortgage. Now you would be struggling to find a lender willing to give you 90% of the house value as a loan. And in a lot of cases, even securing more than 75% of the house value has become extremely difficult.

So what can you do if you want to remortgage and find a new remortgage rate to save you some cash, and take a benefit from falling interest rates? Well you can compare today’s mortage rates yourself and see what is about, but many of the rates on offer are only available for certain types of borrowers. It is more efficient to approach a local mortgage broker and get them to check remortgage rates for you instead. This need not be a difficult search. Many websites offer this contact service, so you can still effectively do the search over the internet. And by using a free service, you are saving yourself time, and hopefully cash.

And make sure you know how to save money in other spheres, car loans including. These simple auto loan calculator tips will help to understand how you can start saving on car loans right now.