Mortgage - low fee for breaking fixed rate

I think the breakage fee depends on the cost of funds at the time when the mortgage was taken out. Mine goes back to 2005. But I agree - since 2017 I got out of fixed rate early several times and was never charged anything. One thing to note is that sometimes people in the branch can give you the wrong info. I rang them 6 months ago to switch to a different rate and was told not to bother as breakage fee was around 1k. Recently I decided to double check and emailed the branch and got an email back saying breakage fee is 0 so I quickly moved to lower rate.

P.S. - my solar panels are going up in Dec. Hopefully that green rate is still there in December for me to switch again :)

Avant Money to raise fixed mortgage rates (rte.ie)

Mortgage provider Avant Money said it will increase its mortgage interest rates from Monday August 15 after the recent rate hike from the European Central Bank.

Avant said that market funding costs have risen sharply this year and with one ECB rate change already announced, more are anticipated.

It said today it will increase its three-year fixed rate product by 0.3% so that rates now start from 2.25%.

The mortgage provider's four-year and five-year fixed rate products increase by 0.5%, while its seven-year fixed rate product will go up by 0.7%.

Avant Money also offers longer term fixed rate mortgages with terms fixed up to 30 years. It said the cost of these mortgages will increase by 1%.

In today's statement, Avant said its current fixed rates will be available to customers with a "letter of offer" who complete full mortgage drawdown by close of business on Friday September 9.

EBS are not unique. There are rules around the calculation of break fees. Basically break fees must reflect the cost/how out of pocket the lender is because of your early repayment (it assumes the lender reinvests in the interbank market). interbank rates have moved in such a way - basically they've increased - that based on when you drew down your mortgage your lender would not be out of pocket so the fee is zero.

Of course it's not possible to say the break fee will be zero for everyone as it depends on the difference between interbank rates on the day you originally fixed and the day you break.

It is.

https://www.ebs.ie/content/dam/ebs/pdfs/mortgage/home-mortgage-general-and-regulatory-information.pdf

My point is that is it a coincidence that nobody from EBS is getting charged a breakage fee and all the other banks are charging it.how come other banks are charging if they are all using the same formula? That's the part that confuses me. When i google "We will not charge you an Early Breakage Charge EBS" I get the third result states "We will not charge you an Early Breakage Charge" but then you click on it and it's no mentioned anywhere. I just can't understand why all other banks are charging the fee and EBS aren't if it's a reflection of the increase in market rates in the last 6-9 months.

I got my AIB breakage fee of 0 and posted off the form with the interest rate last Monday. How long before people got confirmation that they have received the change of interest rate?

At €270 it's probably worth a punt in my view. Was in a similar position myself and went for it a few months back. If you have paperwork relating to improvements it's worth showing them to the accessor or if you have builders drawing showing what insulation was put in first day otherwise I believe minimum figures are used in the calculations.

Have a look at Bonkers.ie to see ho much would the change of rate save you over the 5 year fixed term.

Is there anything you can do easily? Check all the bulbs were LED? Could you install a smart heating controller? See if any easy things to change on last BER recomendations.

Technically yes, interbank rates could move against you and your break fee could rise but is is extremely unlikely. Sentiment would have to change dramatically. Markets would have to change their minds about the expected future ECB rate increases. Given the ECB focus is on trying to bring down inflation it's extremely unlikely

You can always break and go variable with BOI if really concerned.

The bigger risk is your potential new lender ups their rates before you complete the switch.

Cheers lads. That's one fear alieved a bit. Just hope I can avoid any interest rate increases to the product I'm applying for.

Started applying via AIB online tool on Monday morning and have since managed to to get AIP and all required info uploaded. Some has even been verified already. I think I was still filling in forms with my broker at this stage when applying to BOI last time.

My broker actually recommended me to use the tool over him as it should be quicker. He's a mate and probably doesn't tell that to all his clients. So if anyone is debating between a broker and doing it themselves, at least with AIB, it might be quicker to apply directly. He has also stopped recommending Haven due to how much of a mess applying is. Was telling me that most his clients have everything done with AIB before Haven even begin reviewing things.

ECB raising interest rates by 0.75%:

Cannot see the banks not passing that on to customers. Glad I broke out of my old fixed rate last month that still had 12 months to run, refixed for 5 years with no breakage fee. New rate is slightly higher than before but if I was to wait a year until the old rate finished god knows what the fixed rates will be like then.

If your on a tracker rate or don't have long to run on your current fixed rate I'd recommend looking at breaking out of those. I think we are in for a sustaned term of interest rate hikes.