Robert, 42, has a repayment mortgage of £82,000 with Portman Building Society. The two-year fixed rate of 4.99 per cent ends in April. He is able to pay £500 a month but is worried that interest rates are increasing rapidly; he wants a longer fixed-rate repayment mortgage because he is unhappy paying fees every couple of years. The other problem is his age: ideally he would like to pay off his mortgage in the next ten to 15 years, but if he takes out another 25-year mortgage that will bring him to the age of 67.

Jonathan Cornell, of Hamptons Mortgages, says: I would strongly recommend that no borrower increases the length of their mortgage unnecessarily because they will be paying more interest than they need to. In Robert’s case most lenders would ask how he is going to pay his mortgage once he goes beyond normal retirement age. The trouble is that keeping his payments below £500 with a ten to 15-year mortgage is going to be impossible; even if he wasn’t being charged any interest it would take him more than 13½ years paying £500 a month to repay the £82,000 capital that he owes.

Sadly, he is going to have to pay interest as well as capital, so that means he is going to be paying his mortgage for a lot longer. With a mortgage of £82,000, Robert is going to need to try to keep his fees as low as possible. He should call the Portman Building Society and find out what it will offer him, because it will have a range for existing clients. Even if this offer looks good, Robert should look at other lenders because Portman does not use daily interest, so his payments may be higher than they would be with a lender that did offer daily interest but which charged a slightly higher rate.

Robert is right that one of the downsides to remortgaging every couple of years or so is that he may incur fees for valuations and conveyancing. The good news is that many lenders do offer remortgage packages with no fees to pay; the bad news is that this normally means that the client pays a slightly higher rate of interest. Lenders such as Halifax and Nationwide do offer existing clients new rates but these will be from their remortgage range rather than the purchase range, and these are generally slightly higher.

If Robert were to take Nationwide’s two-year fixed rate at 5.58 per cent it has a £499 fee, but the valuation and conveyancing are free. With this rate on a 22-year term (to ensure that the mortgage is paid off before Robert’s 65th birthday) he would pay £540 a month, so £40 over his budget. If Robert wants to take a longer-term tracker he could take advantage of Woolwich’s lifetime tracker rate at base rate plus 0.23 per cent for life. It has no arrangement fees or legal fees, and free valuation. This would cost him £535 a month.

Robert could reduce his payments by taking some of the mortgage on an interest-only basis but this is not a good idea unless he is confident that he can make lump-sum payments to clear this, otherwise he will still have a mortgage outstanding at the end of the term.

Hamptons: 020-7220 1000

JARGONBUSTER What are valuation fees?

The amount charged to conduct a valuation of the property on behalf of the lender. It is to check that the property is suitable for a mortgage and that the price is reasonable. The valuation fee is nonrefundable and valuation is not a detailed inspection. It may not detect structural problems.

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