Should you overpay your mortgage?

Owning your own home is great, but for most people, a mortgage is something that hangs over them for a long time, often decades. So rather than just making your monthly repayment, should you consider overpaying your mortgage? 

Here are the pros and cons of doing so. 

Pros 

You’ll pay less interest

Most mortgage providers will let you overpay up to 10% of your mortgage each year without penalty. So if you have a regular monthly amount you could put towards overpaying, or the occasional lump sum, you could be saving a lot of money. Before you look at overpaying your mortgage, contact a mortgage broker and ensure you’re on the best deal possible. 

Whenever you overpay on your mortgage, you’re reducing the amount of interest you’re paying over the term of your mortgage. If you do this regularly, you could save yourself thousands of pounds. 

You’ll pay off your mortgage quicker

This one is pretty obvious, the more you overpay on your mortgage, the shorter the mortgage term, meaning that you’ll be mortgage-free earlier. Most people dream of being mortgage-free so that they can reduce their monthly outgoings and have a level of freedom. You’ll also be more resilient to any changes in income due to not having a mortgage to pay. 

You’ll build equity faster

The amount of equity you have in your home increases the faster you pay off your mortgage. This can help you if you need to remortgage or if circumstances change and you need to release that equity through selling or remortgaging. 

Cons

In fairness, it’s mostly pros when it comes to paying off your mortgage early. However, there are some things you need to take into account before committing to regularly overpaying your mortgage. 

You’ll have less money available investing

Savings interest rates are low and many people are looking to invest in different areas in order to make their money work harder for them. Tying up your spare capital in property reduces the amount you could be investing elsewhere. 

You won’t have access to emergency funds

If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that it’s important to have an emergency fund to pay essential bills in case the unexpected happens. Most experts recommend between 3 and 6 months worth of money, but really the more you can save the better. 

If you are diverting all of your spare money to overpaying your mortgage, it will be difficult to access it in an emergency. 

You may be increasing debts unnecessarily 

If you have loans and credit card debt to pay off, then it’s a good idea to put extra money towards this in order to reduce the amount of interest you need to pay and the accrued interest. If you have any spare money, use it to reduce your debts first.

Key takeaways 

Many people dream of being mortgage-free as soon as possible. Short of winning the lottery somehow coming into money, then the quickest way is usually to overpay your mortgage when possible to drastically reduce the amount of interest you’re paying and to be mortgage-free sooner.