Halifax mortgages generally have an arrangement fee – well, almost all mortgages do, Halifax aren’t alone in that.

For July they are offering half price arrangement fees on their mortgages – so, if the arrangement fee is normally £999 it is dropped to £497, £499 down to £247 etc.

That’s got to be a bargain, right?

Well, fee’s do come into the equation – if, say, the Abbey have a 2 year fixed rate at 3.5% and so do Halifax, you’d look at the fees and see which were cheapest – usually the survey fee and the booking fee, although if it were a remortgage, you’d have to see if any were offering free legal fees.

What if Halifax had a 2 year fixed rate at 3.5% and Abbey 3.25%. Then you’d compare the fees and the monthly saving with Abbey and see which had the best overall deal.

And, when you are getting very precise, if you decide the arrangement fee will get added to the mortgage, you also need to factor in the interest cost on the larger fee over the smaller fee. Not necessarily over the term of the mortgage, I usually do 7 years which is about the average time people live in a house, unless it’s ‘the last house move’.

Anyway, out of interest (bad pun, sorry) I have just set up a pretend client on my mortgage software and run a league table of 2 year fixed rates on a fairly average £150,000 mortgage. The current leading product for Mr F Example is at 3.15% and over 2 years total costs are £18,388. Halifax are some way down the table with a 2 year fixed rate at 4.49% with a total 2 year cost of £21,087 – which would be £502 cheaper after the half price offer, but still some way off being best.

No doubt you will see alot of adverts from Halifax over the next month, but remember, Halifax are there to sell Halifax products, they won’t tell you what Abbey/Nationwide or any of the others are offering. And vice versa.

An Independent Financial Adviser works for you, to get you the best deal.