Woolwich cuts tracker rate and introduces new three year fixes to help boost mortgage

[Legal Beagles]

Woolwich is cutting the rate on its most popular Lifetime Tracker product in an effort to encourage customers to take advantage of these fully flexible, fee free products at a time when many are sitting tight waiting for better news on short term fixed rates. It is also re-introducing fixed rate products with loan to value options of up to 90 per cent to allow those with smaller deposits to take advantage of the competitive Woolwich rates.

More...

[argentarius]

Re: Woolwich cuts tracker rate and introduces new three year fixes to help boost mort

Rather a dubious press release which claims that the tracker rate has been reduced to 5.89%.

In fact, the tracker rate was 5.74% until about two weeks ago, when it was increased to 5.99%. So the "reduction" is a net increase of 0.10%.

That all said, a lifetime tracker at 5.89% is pretty competitive in today's mortgage market.

[argentarius]

Re: Woolwich cuts tracker rate and introduces new three year fixes to help boost mort

I'm glad to say that Woolwich have (finally) accepted me for the 5.74% iteration of this mortgage product, which is not bad value at all.

Now all I need to do is to sell my house, and find another one, and move house all within the next three and a half months before I start my new job. :scared:

[stevokenevo]

Re: Woolwich cuts tracker rate and introduces new three year fixes to help boost mort

I have a tracker mortgage also, which is good when the rates are low, but scary when they start to creep up.

I dont think it would be a bad idea at the moment either, although rates were held at 5% today, the forecast IS for them to head down to around 4.25% over the next 6 months. but, there is always an element of a gamble with these things.

Good luck with the move, and i hope it all goes to plan! :okay:

[argentarius]

Re: Woolwich cuts tracker rate and introduces new three year fixes to help boost mort

Thanks!

Whilst I'm pleased to have the mortgage offer, it is shocking me how appalling Barclays/Woolwich are.

The mortgage is an offset one, and there will be some spare funds when the mortgage completes (which we want for a rainy day, and to offset against the mortgage meanwhile). But it's too much to expect Barclays to provide the mortgage current account details along with the mortgage offer, or to set up the DD for the new mortgage to debit payments against the new current account.

Barclays also don't set up phone or internet banking automatically - why the heck not? Is this the dark ages? And when I phoned up (India, obviously) to set these up, they couldn't do phone banking - because the account had been set up wrongly - and couldn't do internet banking - because apparently I have 2 customer numbers.

So to sort out both I have to visit a branch.

Give me strength!

What I can't believe is that so many people slag off the customer service they get from my old bank, A&L. At least A&L deal with account opening a lot better than Barclays, and set up the phone and internet stuff from the start without having to be asked.

Oh, I didn't mentioned that the PIN number notifications for my wife and myself are both addressed to the wrong initials i.e. Mr M M Argentarius and Mrs R R Argentarius. Neither of us has 2 initials the same. I'm hoping the plastic cards won't repeat this mistake, but obviously they haven't arrived yet either so I don't know.