Open Plan Mortgage - The best on the market (Barclays)

Member Name:

Product:	Barclays
Date:	14/07/03 (3078 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Value, Flexible, Interest Rate Limited

Disadvantages: They need to supply one number to call, Web communications could be made available

I've had a Barclays Open Plan Mortgage for over a year now, and in my opinion its the best thing since sliced bread.

An overview for those who don't know about it. The Open Plan mortgage enables you to off set the balance of any other Barclays account you have (current or savings) against the total of you mortgage. This means that if you have 2,000 in a savings account, you don't pay the interest on 2,000 of your mortgage. A simple concept that can save a large amount of money, if you are not familiar with the mortgage then I would strongly encourage people to have a look at their web site.

Getting going:

You have to have your current account with Barclays for this mortgage to work (Transfering of accounts I cannot comment on, as I already had a Barclays account). I rang the local office to make an appointment when I was looking, only had to wait until the following day to talk to them. They were able to give me a guarenteed amount of borrow (with proof so that I could easily take it to an estate agent) and all the application forms were take care of. There was no hard sell, they are confident enough with this product that they don't need to.

Buying the house:

There was no problem when it actually came to transfer the money for the sale, as I'd expect. I did however arrange my own buildings and contents insurance as Barclays were quite expensive, however, their survey deal was a good one.

Once its running:

I have had no major problem with the running of the mortgage. They have recently changed the mortgage statements from monthly to quarterly, not a problem however.

Tracking the mortgage:

The statements allow you to see exactly how much you have offset against your mortgage each month and what saving this has given you, so you know exactly how much you owe.

The Interest Rate:

The interest rate when I got my mortgage was guarenteed not to got more th
at 0.75 above base rate - making it one of the best deals for such a guarentee. I've been got before when what starts out to be a good rate has no guarentee to remain the same amount above base rate, even on a variable (no discount) mortgage. I believe that they are only doing 0.95% above base rate for new customers.

The Reserve Account:

When you get the mortgage they automatically give you a "reserve account" which is for the remainder of the money that they said they would be willing to lend you. My advice is not to touch this as it is charged at the bands standard lending rate! Instead borrow more than you need (say £10,000) and put it in a seperate savings account offset against your mortgage. This should give you some emergency money should you need it.

Contacting Barclays:

Before I had the Open Plan mortgage I just had to ring my branch. Now it is slightly harder, I wanted to change some details on our statement and had to ring 4 different numbers (each recommended by the previous) before I got to the right one. A real pain!

How does offset save money:

The concept is that the interest rate is always higher if you borrow money (i.e. a loan, mortgage) than if you save money (current, deposit account). So rather than have £10,000 in a savings account earning 3% and paying 5% on your mortgage you cancel each out, not earning 3%, but also, not paying 5%. (saving 2% of £10,000 - £200 saving) - Barclays web site describes it much better :-)

Savings:

If you have money sitting about (even for half a month waiting for a bill such as a credit Card or council tax) then I'd recommend you at least look at the Barclays Open Plan Mortgage. If really has saved me serious amounts of money.

On-Line Access:

The Barclays online site is pretty good. You can see the balance of all your accounts, transfer money about , pay other accounts/people (You can even see your mortgage a
ccount). Its missing one vital thing in my opinion. The ability to E-mail Barclay or your branch.

Summary: