Guinness

I am pretty sure that most of you are or have been home owners, just wondering what your experiences have been with your banks in Canada. What happened when you had decided to move back to the UK and how much the bank punished you for it??
Had to break mine and just wanted to say never take a mortgage with TD!!

Auld Yin

You had a contract which you obviously did not read. As with most contracts, if you break it there's a penalty. It wouldn't have mattered which Canadian bank was the mortgagee, there would have been a penalty.

Dashie

We renewed ours in March - if we break early, it carries a penalty of $3000 or interest that we would have paid, whichever is greater. All in the contract before we signed it though, and we know we're not going to be ready to do anything until after that time.

Piff Poff

For financial reasons we had to break a mortgage before the 5 year term was up, we also had a penalty, it was a low mortgage amount but we had to pay about $4k in penalties as far as I remember.

Guinness

I wish it had been 4K but it was 9K for 2 years left

Mummy in the foothills

Wow that sucks, we have no prepayment penalty on our mortgage. I made sure to ask for that. Same on our old house, we sold within a year of refinancing.
Is that the same in UK. Do the mortgages penalize you for paying off early, like if you sold to move?

Dashie

I think it depends a lot on whether you stay with the same company or not. We moved a couple of times in the UK, once we just changed the existing mortgage, the other time we paid the penalty and switched because rates had changed a lot, and it actually saved us more over the year than the penalty.

In Canada, we've moved 3 times and not paid a penalty because we stayed with the same company.

Piff Poff

I guess the percentage amount would be in line with the amount of the mortgage, ours was less than $200k. I am only guessing at the amount we had to pay back but it was around the amount I said, as I have tired to erase my memory of the nightmare situation we found ourselves in

Sally Redux

We had one on ours which we were sure was 2 years, when we tried to refinance we found out it was for 5 years, I think they verbally told us 2 but when we signed the big pile of papers we didn't notice that one actually said 5. When we looked online, it was something that had happened to a number of people.

Pistolpete2

But one would expect that the British bank sends you an annual statement showing you the mortgage position, such as mine at C&G Lloyds. The statement shows the amount still owing, the years to go and the years until the penalty period elapses and what the penalty currently is - typically 1% of the outstanding balance for each year left in the penalty period (the period of your fixed or discount element of your mortgage).

My penalty period has just thirteen months to go and I watch it very closely.

Sally Redux

This is in the US.

Pistolpete2

You responded to MITFH who asked is it the same in the UK.

chris955

Our bank penalises us for paying more than the required amount each month We can pay so mcu extra but if we go over that amount we get a penalty.

callowman

When you get a mortgage and sign the 30,000 pieces of paper every page is FOR the bank and NOT for you

no wonder everyone hates banks

my house is now so far underwater I need a scuba kit
but should I decide to move back to UK I will have NO QUALMS about mailing them the key and see ya later !

Sally Redux

Sorry for any confusion, I was replying to the first part of her post.