Start six months before your current deal ends. Most lenders now let you reserve a new rate up to six months in advance, and if rates fall before you complete you can usually move to the better one. Starting early costs nothing. Starting late costs money.
Why six months, specifically
Reserving early gives you something genuinely valuable: a floor without a ceiling.
Lock a rate in today and you are protected if rates rise between now and completion. If rates fall in the meantime, most lenders and brokers will let you switch to the cheaper product before it completes. You have taken the downside off the table and kept the upside.
There is no fee for looking, and no obligation to proceed with whatever you reserve.
Six months is also roughly the window in which a remortgage can go wrong slowly rather than quickly. If a valuation disappoints, if your income evidence needs work, if there is something on your credit file you did not know about — six months is enough time to deal with it. Six weeks often is not.
The calendar that matters
Find your deal end date, not your mortgage end date. They are different, and it is the deal end date that costs you money.
It will be on your annual mortgage statement, in your online account, or your lender can confirm it in a phone call.
Then work backwards:
- Six months before — start looking, reserve a rate
- Four to eight weeks — typical time for a full remortgage to a new lender to complete
- A few days — typical time for a product transfer with your existing lender
The gap between those last two is why the decision about which route matters as much as when.
What happens if you do nothing
Your mortgage moves onto the lender's standard variable rate.
This is the default rate, it is set by the lender, and it is almost always considerably more expensive than any deal you could switch to. There is no notice period and no penalty — the balance simply rolls onto it, and the first you may notice is a higher direct debit.
It is the single most common avoidable cost we see, and it is entirely passive. Nobody chooses the standard variable rate. People arrive on it by not acting.
If your deal has already ended
Not a disaster, and not unusual. Two useful points:
There is normally no early repayment charge on the standard variable rate. Those charges apply during a fixed or discounted period. Once you are on the SVR you can usually leave whenever you like, at no cost.
So the sooner you act, the sooner it stops. There is nothing to wait for. If you are on the SVR now, this is worth dealing with this month.
When early is not the right answer
There are situations where the honest advice is to wait:
A large early repayment charge. If leaving your current deal early would trigger a charge running into thousands, the saving from a new rate rarely covers it. Better to reserve a rate to start the day your current deal ends.
A change coming. If you are about to move house, change jobs, go self employed or take maternity leave, that affects affordability. Sometimes the right move is a short product transfer to buy time, then a proper remortgage once things settle.
Selling within a year. If you are moving soon, a two-year fix may cost more in charges than it saves. Porting or a tracker may suit better.
What if rates fall while you are still in your fixed deal?
This comes up constantly, and the answer is usually disappointing but occasionally not.
While you are inside a fixed period, leaving early normally triggers an early repayment charge, typically calculated as a percentage of the outstanding balance and often reducing each year of the deal. On a large balance early in a five-year fix, that charge can run well into five figures. A lower rate elsewhere rarely covers it.
Two situations where it is genuinely worth checking rather than assuming:
You are near the end of the deal. Early repayment charges usually taper. In the final months the charge may be small enough that switching early to a materially better rate pays for itself.
Your loan to value has dropped sharply. If the property has risen in value or you have overpaid substantially, you may now sit in a much better band. Occasionally the improvement is large enough to outweigh the charge.
Ask us to run the arithmetic rather than guessing. It takes five minutes and the answer is either clearly yes or clearly no.
What to have ready
- Your current lender, balance and deal end date
- Any early repayment charge, in writing
- Recent payslips or, if self employed, two years of accounts
- Three months of bank statements
- A rough idea of your property's current value
That is enough for us to tell you whether switching pays.
Diarise it now
If you do one thing after reading this: find your deal end date and put a reminder in your calendar six months before it. That single note is worth more than most rate comparisons.
Call 0116 277 7536 or see remortgage advice in Leicester.
More guides: remortgage guides for Leicester.
