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Ed and Jo took out a two year 6.75% fixed rate in summer 2008 from a large high street lender, thinking that, since Bank Base Rate (BBR) had come down from 5.75% in July 2007 to 5% in June 2008, it was unlikely to come down much more. In any case, they prefer fixed rates as they like the security of knowing what their repayments are over set periods of time. Then the BBR started falling, and didn’t stop until it hit 0.5% in March 2009. With two year fixed rates now around 3.5%, Ed and Jo are wondering if it is worth switching their £600,000 interest only mortgage away from their current lender.

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Richard Waple, managing director of Property Investment Holdings, is one of a growing number of borrowers who have benefited from largemortgageloans.com’s expertise in arranging ‘million’ plus mortgages.

Richard had never missed a payment on his mortgage for the four years it had been running, but when his fixed rate deal ended last summer he had difficulty finding a new competitive rate from a high street lender, even with a low loan to value.

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An Egyptian businessman based in Cairo, is among the fortunate ones. Sammy Abd Kerim began looking for a London base in the summer of 2007 through estate agency Kay & Co and quickly found a perfect three-bedroom property on the third floor of a luxury block overlooking Hyde Park. “I come to [the city] four or five times a year so I felt it would be good to have a base where I could stay and bring my family,” he explains.

He offered £2.1m for the flat, slightly below the asking price of £2.35m, but London’s prime market was still at its peak at the time and the seller rejected his offer. “I walked away at the time and continued to look around,” Abd Kerim says, “but in autumn last year the sellers reduced it to £2.1m and we picked up our discussion. Now I am expecting to pay £1.9m, which amounts to a reduction of almost 20 per cent on the
original asking price.”

Crucially, since the Egyptian pound gained 26 per cent against sterling in 2008, he saved another £500,000. He recognises that the flat’s value could fall further but thinks now is the right time to buy. The market “may lose another 5 per cent but no more and prices will rise again in due course”, he says. “I don’t feel the need to wait longer. Even if the market falls another 10 per cent, I have saved a great deal of money on the currency exchange. In fact, I am thinking of using it to invest in a second flat to rent out, as a bonus.”