I had an interesting letter from my mortgage company today. It ‘invited’ me to accelerate my repayments and pointed out how much money that this would save me over the lifetime of my mortgage.
This is interesting because as a good pinster, I have been paying off lump sums every year to decrease the amount owed. I had asked that the term be shortened so that my repayments were constant but they refused. So I have been and will be paying ever decreasing amounts over the life of the mortgage (unless or until I can give them a lump sum to pay it off altogether).
Being slightly paranoid, I put this down to the fact that my mortgage may have been included as part as a CDO and as long as I was paying, this was viewed as a functioning mortgage and thus they wanted me to pay for the full term. The overpayments that I made could be used in this context to cover for non-functioning mortgages in the CDO, giving the appearence of a better than actual performance with respect to arrears/default within the CDO. Ultimately, the non functioning mortgages would be exposed down the line, but the company would have bought some time.
Having received this letter, I am in mind to reply to it and tell them that I am willing to pay off the mortgage, if they give me a discount. Anybody got any experience of using this approach?