Remortgages for self-employed workers

Hand on heart, the self-employed community has massively improved its attitude to remortgaging. There are still those who don’t/won’t remortgage. And there are still those who wait until it’s too late and land on their lender’s punitive SVR.

But, for the majority, the landscape has changed. Lenders are contacting their clients 3 to 6 months before their current mortgage deal is due to expire. That’s ‘helping’ more people stay on top of their mortgage finances than ever.

Great, right!? Or is it?

Don’t settle for your lender’s SVR!

You know, we get it. The process of securing their first mortgage can leave self-employed people emotionally scarred. And that’s exactly what lenders are playing on now. They’re making it so easy to remortgage through their apps, by email, or by snail mail. It’s almost painless.

But what, exactly, are those plasters covering? Let’s go big and rip off that plaster in one go.

If your current mortgage deal has come to an end and you’ve done nothing about it, you’ll be sitting on your lender’s Standard Variable Rate. This rate is so punitive, it makes your eyes water.

SVRs are typically 2 to 3 percentage points higher than their best mortgage rates. So, if the best deals sit between 4% to 5%, expect to pay 6% to 8% on a typical SVR. That makes a huge difference to your monthly repayment amount.

The irony is, you’re probably in a better position now to get a better rate than when you took out your current deal. If you’ve kept up with your mortgage repayments and not done anything to harm your credit score, you’ve actually strengthened your position:

• By maintaining your mortgage payments, you typically improve your credit score
• The longer you’ve been in your current home, the higher the likelihood that you’ve increased equity in it

These two factors alone should embolden you to remortgage. Here’s how that would work if you approached a mortgage lender through a specialist broker like us:

How to remortgage as a self-employed professional:

The key to remortgaging successfully is gaining access to underwriters who recognise the benefits of your self-employed income. So often with a traditional lender, it’s almost as if they’re looking for all the negatives.

Since our incorporation in 2004, we’ve been working closely with lenders sympathetic to the self-employed. We’ve based this guide on those relationships, cultivated in the heat of the fire.

A short, sharp history of remortgage rates

Before I get into self-employed remortgaging, there is a caveat. If you took out a five-year fixed deal before September 2022, you’ll be on a spectacularly low interest rate compared to rates available now.

Rates shot up after the infamous Liz Truss ‘mini-budget’. During 2024/2025, we saw those rates slowly reduce from those post-budget highs. They hardly reached the super-low sub-1% and sub-2% deals that were available beforehand. But they were heading in the right direction.

However, since the US/Israel/Iran war, rates are beginning to rise again. Global uncertainty is impacting swap rates and inflation. The only course of action the Bank of England can responsibly take is to raise the Base Rate of borrowing.

The upshot of all this is: if you took out your current mortgage deal before September 2022, you’ll be on a super-low rate. The likelihood of returning to those historic lows in the foreseeable future is nil. So, when you come to remortgage now, you will see a jump in your remortgage rate (at time of writing).

Okay. That’s cleared that up. Let’s crack on with the actual process and how we can help alleviate that rate shock:

Rate Monitoring Service

We want to help you mitigate the shock of your next remortgage rate. To that end, our remortgage rate monitoring service will help you feel confident that you’re getting the best deal for your situation.

What’s that, then?

We believe that securing a self-employed worker’s first or next mortgage isn’t just a one-off transaction. We want to help you pay as little as you can for the life of your mortgage. Not just your current deal. We mean, from when we first do business until you’ve paid off your mortgage completely.

Ideally, that would mean approaching us when your current deal has six months left to run. Why six months? That’s the maximum length of time lenders allow you to lock in a new deal without penalties.

With rates steadily declining until recently, few homeowners remortgaged early. But our service will help put you in control of your next interest rate, up to a point.

Win-win! Pay less if rates go down. Pay what you lock in today if they go up!!!

What if you could choose a rate now, but if a cheaper deal turned up before your remortgage was due to kick in, you could lock that in instead? Would you be interested then?

Well, of course you would.

Ah!, you say. What if, like now, rates are rising? Won’t we pay a higher rate if we don’t confirm our remortgage right now?

Good question. Say your remortgage is due in six months. You choose a new deal today via our Rate Monitor Service, the best possible rate today for your circumstances. You lock that in with us.

Guess what rate you’ll pay for your new deal when it starts?

That’s right: the rate you lock in today.

It doesn’t matter if rates rocket between today and when your remortgage is due to start. You’ve secured your rate. That’s what you’ll pay if rates rise in the meantime.

And what happens if you take out a remortgage directly with your lender? Will they move you onto a lower rate if one becomes available?

No. They may not even take into account a better credit score (if you’ve achieved one) or the greater equity in your home. They’ll instead base their remortgage offer on the records they hold for you.

So, what’s the catch with our Rate Monitoring Service?

There isn’t one. After you’ve locked in a deal via our Rate Monitoring Service, if rates go down, we move you to the lower rate. We will do all the work for you in the background. If interest rates go up, no sweat. Your new rate is the one you’ve locked in with us. Win, win!

Why do I need a mortgage broker?

The short answer is: because we’re here to support you and make your remortgaging journey smoother and less stressful.

In theory, you could do all this yourself. Constantly monitor comparison sites for however long is left on your current remortgage. Then, after saying a million Hail Marys, praying that the best rate you’ve found doesn’t disappear before you act, you finally take the plunge.

But here’s the big problem with comparison sites: their deals are not guaranteed to be with lenders sympathetic to the self-employed.

The specialist lender differential

In a broad sense, self-employed workers fall into three categories:

• Sole traders
• Company directors
• Contractors

Fitting self-employed workers into these categories can oversimplify how lenders assess different self-employed income structures. Many traditional lenders try to fit every applicant into rigid lending criteria that don’t accommodate specialist income well. What’s more, their algorithms don’t reflect the reality of self-employed earnings. That’s where we come in.

To find your true mortgage affordability, you’ve got to look beyond SA302s and TYOs. That’s where you’ll benefit from the manual underwriting we can give you access to. Here’s what that means in practical terms:

Sole traders:

Lenders typically derive your net profit from your SA302. They’ll then average this figure over 2 to 3 years to determine your baseline income for their affordability calculation.

By contrast, specialist underwriters will manually assess your application. Using this method, most self-employed workers can use just one year’s trading history.

In addition, underwriters will take a holistic view of your business. They’ll use their experience (and common sense) to offer you a competitive remortgage with a fairer interest rate.

Limited company directors and contractors:

Directors’ and contractors’ income are complicated. By rote, their accountant advises them to hold retained profits within their businesses. That means any retained profit is inaccessible for traditional lenders’ affordability calculations.

So, most traditional lenders can only incorporate basic salary plus any drawn dividends into their static algorithms. This amount is useless for most contractors and directors; nor does it reflect what you can truly afford to borrow.

Instead, our specialist lenders include those retained profits. Using the bulk of your income can often double what they’ll offer you for a remortgage.

Next steps

The remortgage market is both competitive and dynamic. With our Rate Monitoring Service, we can continually move you to the lowest available remortgage rates. We can do this anywhere from two weeks to up to six months before your new deal kicks in.

You owe it to yourself to pay the least amount for your mortgage that you possibly can. And the best part? We do all the work for you. Lock in your remortgage today: