Climbing the Ladder

Pick a mortgage. Live with it for five years.
Mortgages and borrowing
★
The narrator

The estate agent rang. Your offer was accepted: £200,000 for a two-bed flat. You have £20,000 saved as a deposit. That means you need to borrow £180,000. Four mortgage products are on the table. They look similar today. In five years, they won't.

What you'll do

  • Pick a rate scenario, or let it be random. This decides how the Bank of England base rate moves over the next five years.
  • Pick one of four mortgage products. Each works differently when rates move.
  • Watch each year play out. Your monthly payment may change, depending on the product you picked.
  • At year five, see what each product would have cost. The right answer depends on what the rates did.
4Mortgages
5Years
~8Minutes

Why this matters

A mortgage is the largest single borrowing decision most people ever make. Choosing the wrong product at the wrong time can cost thousands of pounds a year. There is no one right answer. What's right depends on what rates do next, and nobody knows that for certain. The skill is understanding how each product behaves, so you can make a choice that fits your situation.

What will rates do?
Pick a scenario. This is the rate path your mortgage will face.

Three rate paths, one random pick

In the real world, no one knows what rates will do. To learn how each mortgage behaves, pick a scenario. Or hit "surprise me" and find out at the end of the sim.

Four mortgages on the table
Borrow £180,000, over 25 years. Pick one.