I think several of the banks are offering a 3 month payment holiday at the moment. This just means that future repayments will slightly more than what you pay now. This is applicable even if you’ve not overpaid.
It *should* be all of them. Behind the scenes the Gov spoke to them all via the FSA (probably) saying “Remember 2007? Yeah, so do we, everyone gets a 3 month Holiday no-questions-asked but Interest continues to accrue”.
A lot of my friends have done it as a matter of course, they’d rather have 3 month mortgage payments in the bank if things go wrong, frankly a lot of them are 15 years or more into their mortgage with tonnes of equity and just fancy a nice holiday after all this is over.
Things are different for us, we’re 4 months into buying our first home. Our mortgage is an eye-watering £1100 a month so £3300 ‘saved’ over 3 months is very appealing at the moment, but we only bought our place in December with a 5% deposit. We will have paid off about another 5% by the time our 2-year mortgage deals ends. We also bought a ‘needs modernising’ probate sale, we’ve got a brand new kitchen and bathroom and if/when they ever reopen new carpets throughout and decorated etc. If we get what we paid in, we’ll have increased it by 5% of the original value – the plan was with a bit of an increase in value that we’d safely get into 85% LTV by the the time the 2 years is up to get that 1.5% rate which would save us £250 a month or reduce the term by 7 years.
Now, I’m more concerned with staying out of the default bend-over rate, if values fall as much as they did in 2007 it’ll wipe out all our equity, including our deposit and we’ll struggle to remortgage at all. Owing an extra £3k really won’t help, so things will have to get very bad before I take a holiday.