How have you set up your mortgage?

I'm wondering how everyone has their mortgage set up and why..

We have typically just fixed the whole lot for 2years but I've been a newbie to the mortgage thing and didn't realise until recently you can split it up and it can work really well at getting it paid down quicker and spreading your risk..

Right now we have the whole lot floating just until we figure out how we wanna set it up as we just came off a nasty interest rate.

We have most on 2 year fixed and $10K on revolving credit. That is currently fully paid off but we'll use it partly up while I'm on mat leave. We went for 2 years fixed b/c a) that was a good rate and b) it fitted with our plans to have #2. RC also functions as an insurance policy - we don't have health insurance but it meant that if DS needed grommets or something and there was going to be a long wait, we would have some capacity to pay for that without taking on another debt. We also put as much as possible onto the mortgage each month which means it's an 8 year mortgage.

Definitely worth talking to a mortgage broker. When we renewed, we didn't go back through them but DH had learned heaps about mortgages and wrote his own programme so he could look at all the possible combinations (which the bank websites couldn't do).

We are the same as Flissty. The revolving credit is the best thing we have ever done, it has made it so much quicker to pay off. We just started it last year and we paid off five times the amount (all principal) that we had paid off the year before when we were just fixed

I would recommend talking to NZ Home Loans. We are using their exact method but stayed with ASB (ie we just stole all of their ideas )

All floating at the moment. We will look at fixing some of it thou soon.

Not very well! All fixed at the moment until late next year.

We're with kiwibank and have ours split 3 ways, 2 years, 1 year and floating. I did that because the longer length rates were crap at the time. Our 1 year will be coming up soon and I think I'll just leave it floating for a while.

kebakat wrote: We are with BNZ currently. We have spoken to kiwibank who recommended a 3 way split, some 4yr fixed, some 2yr fixed and some floating.

This is what we have done since day one and it works brilliantly for us! I totally recommend it.

Our fixed rate is due for renewal in December, we will most likely re-fix as we'll be on one income by then and due to our living situation (ie: being in Akl for 3 years) we prefer to have certainty around re-payments.  Even if it means paying a slightly higher interest rate initially.

We have a big chunk flexible but mostly we try to keep that close to fully paid off as it's our emergency fund. Ours isn't big enough to warrant more than a 2-way split, so we have the rest fixed for three years. We pay more than the minimum on that, and have made the maximum lumpsum payment they allow without penalty each year so the principal is going down fast too.

We will refix that portion for 2 years in November because that fits in nicely with our current plans for babies - it will hopefully allow us to be refinancing when we make the decision how many hours I will return to work after baby2, so we can make payments more or less depending what we decide. I like that that timing will mean our work decisions will dictate our mortgage decisions, not the other way around.