The house on the case below, at 4.19%. 48 brick courses, filled bottom-up as the term runs
Month 0 · completion day 5 of 48 courses yours 5 on the high street
Month 000 · completion day · 5 of 48 courses

Whole-of-market mortgage advice, £395, payable only on completion.

Your deposit buys the bottom five courses. The other forty-three belong to the lender until they are bought back.

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Month 024 · year 2 · 7 of 48 courses

Two years of payments have bought you two courses.

On this case that is £1,379 a month, £33,085 paid, and £12,107 of it went on bricks. The rest was interest. Nobody enjoys hearing that, and it is the reason the rate is worth arguing about while the balance is still near its highest.

It is also why a first-time buyer gains more from advice than anyone else on our books. We are on every lender panel we can be on, including the six that will not quote you directly.

4.19% · £1,379 a month · £157,510 interest over the term

One rate held for the whole term. The gable re-fills as you drag it, and every course is re-solved from the annuity, not interpolated.

A terrace of brick houses on a quiet street, graded almost cold
Year two. Almost no colour, because almost none of it is yours. chroma at 14.3% of full, the share owned here

First-time buyers. Agreement in principle, deposit and gift letters, the lender's affordability model, and what a broker can do about a rate you have already been offered. See the products

Month 060 · year 5 · 10 of 48 courses

Year five. The fix ends, and the slope breaks.

Both cases have bought exactly 10 courses so far, because both were fixed for five years. From month 60 they part. We remortgage this client onto 4.37%; the case that stayed put rolls onto the lender's 8.24% variable rate and its payment jumps from £1,548 to £1,941.

Courses bought in each year of the term, at the broker rate and on the high street the fix ends year 1 year 25
Courses bought each year. Solid is this client; the outline is the case that did nothing at month 60. The step at year six is the whole argument for remortgaging.
A stone corner house at a junction, graded at a fifth of full colour
Year five. A fifth of the walls. chroma at 21.3% of full, the share owned here

Remortgage. We diarise the end of every fixed rate we arrange and come back to you six months before it lands, because a lender's variable rate is the most expensive thing on this page. See the rate table

Month 120 · year 10 · 17 of 48 courses

Ten years in, the gap is 3 courses.

17 courses against 14. In money, £15,628 more of this house belongs to its owner than to the version of them who took the first rate they were shown, and over the whole term the difference in interest is £140,108.

That is what searching the whole market is worth here. It is one house, one deposit and one term; the only variable is the rate, and the rate is the part we do.

Our fee is £395, payable on completion and never before. We are also paid a procuration fee by the lender, and we will tell you what it is before you apply. How we are paid

A row of bay-fronted terraced houses, graded at a third of full colour
Year ten. A third of the walls, and three courses clear of the high street. chroma at 35.1% of full, the share owned here

The back half of the term

The annuity curve is convex, so this is where it stops crawling. Each row below is one year of the same case: the courses owned, what the high-street version owns, and what is still outstanding. Each row arrives at the reading line in the year it is about.

  1. 13
    yours
    22/48
    high street
    18/48
    gap
    4
    outstanding
    £156,674
  2. 14
    yours
    23/48
    high street
    20/48
    gap
    3
    outstanding
    £146,519

    Half the house arrives in year 15, ten years later than most people expect it to.

  3. 15
    yours
    25/48
    high street
    21/48
    gap
    4
    outstanding
    £135,910
  4. 16
    yours
    27/48
    high street
    23/48
    gap
    4
    outstanding
    £124,828
  5. 17
    yours
    29/48
    high street
    25/48
    gap
    4
    outstanding
    £113,253
  6. 18
    yours
    31/48
    high street
    27/48
    gap
    4
    outstanding
    £101,161

    The gap between the two rates is at its widest here, and starts closing from now on.

  7. 19
    yours
    33/48
    high street
    29/48
    gap
    4
    outstanding
    £88,530
  8. 20
    yours
    35/48
    high street
    32/48
    gap
    3
    outstanding
    £75,336
  9. 21
    yours
    38/48
    high street
    35/48
    gap
    3
    outstanding
    £61,554
  10. 22
    yours
    40/48
    high street
    38/48
    gap
    2
    outstanding
    £47,157

    The last three years buy nine courses, more than the first ten years managed between them.

Month 276 · year 23 · 43 of 48 courses

Year twenty-three, and the ghost has almost caught up.

43 courses against 41. Both houses will be owned outright on the same day, because a 25-year term ends whether or not the rate was right. The gap was never going to be in the finish. It was in what it cost to get there.

A brick terrace under an evening sky at full colour
Full colour, because by now all of it is theirs. chroma at 100.0% of full, the share owned here
Month 300 · redemption · 48 of 48 courses

The last course.

£162,673 of interest over the term, and £140,108 less than the same house, on the same day, at the rate they were first offered. That difference is the whole of what we do.