How long are mortgages usually for?

Your mortgage term is the length of time you have to pay back the money (plus interest) that you have borrowed from your mortgage lender.

Traditionally, this was 25 years but it can be longer or shorter.

If you choose an interest-only mortgage, you will pay off all the interest due over the term, leaving you to repay the original amount borrowed the capital in a single chunk at the end.

If you go for a repayment mortgage (also known as a capital and interest mortgage), the monthly payments will be higher, but by the end of the term you will have cleared the entire debt.

Several lenders now offer terms of 40 years or more.

A loan of this length may seem very attractive, as the monthly repayments will be quite a bit lower than for a standard term.

However, because you are repaying the money over longer than normal, you will end up paying far more interest.

And do you really want to be paying a mortgage when other people your age are debt-free and thinking about retiring?

The shorter the term you choose, the higher the monthly payments, but the upside is that you will be debt-free faster.

To help you decide on the length of your mortgage term, read What mortgage term should I choose?

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Important note about your credit rating

Many websites don't make it clear that filling in their mortgage enquiry form means you might be credit checked.

This can put you at risk.

UK Mortgage lenders may assume an enquiry you have aleady made to another lender means you were turned down - and not that you are in fact carefully shopping around and rejecting the bad deals.

The best way around this significant problem is to ask an independent mortgage adviser to make anonymous enquiries for you.

Without risking your credit score an adviser can find you the best available mortgage deal. They will also know how likely you are to be accepted by the lender if you decide to make a formal application.

If you would like a recommended adviser to check out the best deals for you, anonymously, simply fill in the quick form below.

" Hmm..." You might think; "Won't I be hounded by a salesman hungry for my business? "

This is the most common question we hear from our users.

The answer is no you won't.

Firstly your enquiry is only passed to ONE person on a carefully vetted list of independent advisers.

Secondly, these mortgage advisers are professionals. Even when the market is slow they are busy people. There many people who need to move homes, or get a remortgage and are looking for advice all the time. Regardless of the state of the property market, life goes on.

So the advisers don't have time to hassle people. It just doesn't work like that. No one is gong to be forced into taking out a mortgage unless they really need one.

The advisers are very used to talking with people, perhaps like yourself, who are only "dipping their toes" into the water.

Many people just want an initial quick chat and if they feel comfortable will ask the advisor to contact them again later - often in several weeks or months. As a professional, the adviser will simply diarise this and call back at the appropriate time. There is no obligation at all.

(In the unlikely event that you ever feel at all "hassled" by someone on our list please let us know immediately. We have never heard of this. But if it happened we would definitely want to know).

How to get a Mortgage in the UK

Here we give you a step by step guide on how to get a mortgage with special tips

Mortgage Guide
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Mortgage Basics
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