2017 Guide: Which is the Top UK Mortgage Calculator? HSBC vs Santander vs NatWest vs RBS
Getting a mortgage is a big decision, and it has very important ramifications on your future finances.
Signing up for a home loan is an action that should not be taken lightly. As with any important decision, it is vital that you do your research when finding a loan to buy a home.
Your monthly mortgage payments will likely be the largest expense you pay each month, meaning it is good planning to know what that number will look like by using a UK mortgage calculator.
A UK mortgage calculator can help you quickly see how much you will spend paying off your home loan every month.
But it can also do more than that. As you pay your mortgage each month, you will naturally become curious about what exactly you are paying for.
As with any credit product, you are not just paying off the amount of money you borrowed. If banks lent out money with the sole expectation of getting it back, there would be no benefit.
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Say you bank with HSBC. They are going to expect interest as payment for the privilege of borrowing their money. There may also be other costs bundled into the cost of the mortgage like closing costs and mortgage insurance.
By using the HSBC mortgage calculator, you could get a rough estimate of how much you are looking to pay and whether you can afford a mortgage considering your budget.
This article will conduct a comparison of some of the UK mortgage calculators available online.
It will take a look at the HSBC mortgage calculator, the NatWest mortgage calculator, the Santander mortgage calculator, and the RBS mortgage calculator.
It will also provide advice on what variables to consider when deciding on a mortgage and provide a helpful explanation on some of the terminology used by these calculators.
Whether you are using an HSBC mortgage calculator, NatWest mortgage calculator, Santander mortgage calculator, or RBS mortgage calculator, knowing the story behind the information you are typing in (amortization period, interest rate, fixed vs. variable) is very helpful for making informed decisions about your home loan.
See Also: Top Ways to Find the Best Mortgage Amortization Calculators & Schedule
HSBC Mortgage Calculator
HSBC is a British-based multinational financial institution. It originally provided financial services to the Hong Kong and Shanghai areas, which is where it gets its name from; HSBC stands for Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
HSBC provides a range of mortgages in addition to its many financial products and has a helpful page of HSBC mortgage calculators for customers to use.
The mortgages page that features the HSBC mortgage calculators in addition to home loan information is packed with resources and helpful tips for potential homeowners.
The HSBC mortgage site has four distinctively helpful HSBC mortgage calculators:
- An HSBC mortgage calculator for finding the right mortgage
- An HSBC mortgage calculator that estimates how much the bank will be willing to lend you
- An HSBC mortgage overpayment calculator for seeing how much time and money you can save by making additional monthly payments toward your mortgage
- An HSBC mortgage repayment calculator to see how much your monthly payments will be based on your principal, insurance, and amortization period
HSBC Mortgage Calculator: Finding the Right Mortgage
If this is your first time buying a house or you are dealing with different financial need or a unique circumstance than the last time you bought a home, you may be at a loss for how to find the right mortgage.
In this case, doing your research and crunching your numbers to find a credit product that is most appropriate for you comes before plugging a bunch of different figures into an HSBC mortgage repayment calculator.
This HSBC mortgage calculator allows you to find and compare a number of different HSBC mortgages to get the rate that is best for you. The easy-to-use tool asks you a few simple questions related to what you are looking for.
The first question you need to answer for the HSBC mortgage calculator is, “What do you want to do?”
You must indicate whether you are buying your first property, moving or buying another property, remortgaging, borrowing more funds as an existing customer, or borrowing more funds as someone who is not.
If you indicate that you are buying your first property, the HSBC mortgage calculator will proceed to ask you whether this mortgage is for your principal residence or a buy-to-let.
It will ask for the property’s estimated value, how much you plan to deposit, what kind of mortgage you want (all mortgages, fixed-rate, etc.), and whether you want to initiate a capital repayment or interest only repayment.
Finally it will ask you to pick the period of time over which you want to pay for this mortgage (the HSBC mortgage calculator allows you to pick a period from 5 years to 30 years).
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HSBC Mortgage Calculator: How Much Can I Borrow from HSBC?
This is another important kind of HSBC mortgage calculator that the bank provides. It is one thing to know what kind of mortgage you want. It is an entirely different thing to know just how much you stand to earn from the bank.
This HSBC mortgage calculator helps determine roughly how much the bank will be willing to lend you. It asks questions related to the property value, the amount you want to borrow, the amortization period, the location of the property, the number of people applying, and the number of dependents.
But the information requested by the HSBC mortgage calculator goes beyond this. In order to understand how much you are capable for borrowing (which by extension asks how much you are capable of repaying and how much the bank should be lending you), this HSBC mortgage repayment calculator requests information related to your personal financial situation.
This HSBC mortgage calculator asks for your gross annual income, your current credit card balance, the total amount of the monthly loan payments you are currently making, and the amount of any other monthly financial commitments you may have.
This HSBC mortgage repayment calculator is a terrific tool to utilize. Getting in over your head by taking on a mortgage you do not have the financial capacity to pay back can be catastrophic.
If the HSBC mortgage calculator tells you that the amount of money they will likely lend you is not equal to the amount of money you need, then consider taking a break from searching for a mortgage and working instead on saving up for a larger down payment.
HSBC Mortgage Overpayment Calculator: How Much Will Additional Mortgage Payments Help Me?
Some home borrowers are eager to rid themselves of mortgage debt as quickly as possible. Getting lucky and winning the lottery is one great way to quickly pay off your home loan, but if you do not have this luxury, simply saving your money so that you can make larger contributions is a good strategy, too.
The HSBC mortgage overpayment calculator is very useful under these circumstances.
Each individual’s mortgage will differ in terms of how overpayments are treated. Some may penalize overpayments as early payments, diminishing the positive effect of such an additional contribution. (When people pay off their mortgage early, the bank loses money in the long term in interest.)
However, you may be able to make occasional overpayments without a fee or even work out regular overpayments you can make over the course of your loan. Simply overpaying instead of getting a new mortgage may be preferred for people who do not wish to go through the hassle of refinancing. This HSBC mortgage overpayment calculator assumes the overpayment is regular over the course of the loan.
Plug your loan amount, interest rate, loan term, and amount of the regular overpayments into the HSBC mortgage overpayment calculator to crunch the numbers and get a picture of how additional payments may help you.
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HSBC Mortgage Repayment Calculator: Straightforward View of Monthly Payments
This is perhaps the most straightforward of the HSBC mortgage calculators available on the site. It is a quick and easy tool for seeing how much you stand to pay each month if you decide on a specific mortgage.
Simply plug in the numbers related to your loan amount, interest rate, and term into the HSBC mortgage repayment calculator for a quick snapshot of what your month-to-month payments on your mortgage will be.
Santander Mortgage Calculator
When you are looking for a UK mortgage calculator, checking to see if there is one offered by the financial institution you are considering for your mortgage is a good first step to take. Consumers interested in mortgage products from Santander will be happy to know that there is a Santander mortgage calculator offered by the website.
This Santander mortgage calculator UK resource is helpful for comparing rates and determining monthly payments.
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The Santander mortgage calculators are available on the website for interested customers or potential customers to use. Much like the HSBC mortgage calculator, this Santander mortgage calculator UK page comes with a variety of different calculators for budgeting different mortgage scenarios.
Santander mortgages calculators can help you determine how much the bank will loan you, how much you can afford to borrow, or could adjust your mortgage.
You can access the Santander mortgages calculators for determining your budget for a monthly mortgage payment and the amount you can borrow in total here and here, respectively.
Two especially useful Santander mortgages calculators are the calculators that help you look at the numbers to see how you can change your existing mortgage deal or make changes to your current mortgage.
If you want to transfer your mortgage deal, you will be prompted to provide your mortgage account number to review your options. You can find this at the top of your mortgage statement. After that, you can proceed to explore your rate options for a change in your current mortgage plan with this specific Santander mortgage calculator.
If you wish to alter your existing mortgage (such as changing the repayment term or the interest rate) you can use this Santander mortgage calculator to explore the effects different scenarios would have on your monthly payment and loan length.
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NatWest Mortgage Calculator
NatWest Bank, also known as National Westminster Bank, is a very large and popular retail bank in the United Kingdom. As such, it provides funds for a number of consumers who wish to buy a home. NatWest’s mortgages page offers a number of UK mortgage calculators and tools for hopeful borrowers to use.
While NatWest offers a number of helpful literature and resources, finding a complete list or set of buttons for a selection of different NatWest mortgages calculators that customers can click between is not available.
With the other banking companies, the different calculators are explicitly labelled, allowing online users to differentiate between literature and tools they could use for specific calculations.
This is not to say that NatWest does not have NatWest mortgages calculators. There are NatWest mortgage calculators to help customers gain comparisons and crunch numbers.
One of the NatWest mortgages calculators is geared toward helping customers determine what their monthly repayment amount will be depending on the loan amount, loan term, and interest rate. This NatWest UK mortgage calculator allows individuals to plug in their information for a quick estimate of how much they will be paying in the future.
Understanding what you are capable of repaying is an important part of the process of acquiring a mortgage. Use the NatWest UK mortgage calculator to understand what your monthly loan payment will look like. Signing up for a mortgage that you cannot afford is begging for trouble, and you do not want to put yourself at risk of losing your home to the bank.
Use the NatWest UK mortgage calculator to determine how much you will be paying toward your mortgage and then compare that to the amount of money you have each month, minus your usual expenses.
If you find that it is cutting it too close to your total budget or even goes beyond your budget, consider waiting, working on your credit to qualify for a better interest rate, or saving up for a larger down payment.
NatWest also offers a NatWest mortgage overpayment calculator.
Much like those offered by other banks, the NatWest mortgage overpayment calculator is very straightforward. You can use the calculator to determine how much faster you will pay off your mortgage and how much less you will wind up paying (since you will be paying less interest).
The great thing about the NatWest mortgage overpayment calculator is that this NatWest mortgage calculator is not limited to a regular overpayment over the course of the loan when using it. You can enter either a regular overpayment or a lump sum when making your calculations.
RBS Mortgage Calculator
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) also offers an RBS mortgage calculator for its customers. RBS is chiefly based in Scotland with select branches around England and Wales. Customers need simply indicate the property value, the type of mortgage they are looking for, and the amount they will be putting as a down payment.
The RBS mortgage calculator doubles as a mortgage finder, allowing customers to compare rates and find the ideal mortgage package. The RBS mortgage page is set up in a very similar style to NatWest’s mortgage page.
This makes sense considering the fact that they are under the same holding company. But this means that finding the RBS mortgage calculator for you is not as straightforward as with the other companies.
There is definitely information available and certainly a calculator that can be found within that information, but it is not as readily accessible for someone who is simply looking for a UK mortgage calculator on the RBS website.
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Conclusion—UK Mortgage Calculators
In a comparison between HSBC mortgage calculators, Santander mortgage calculators, NatWest mortgage calculators, and RBS mortgage calculators, the HSBC tools seem to come out on top for their accessibility, simplicity, and variety, but different customers may find a preference for any of these calculators we covered.
It will all depend on personal preference and what you are looking for in a UK mortgage calculator.
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