Get a good house deal on the web

With interest rates the lowest they've been for decades - and likely to go lower still - there's never been a better time to remortgage. Lenders seem to be giving money away. Even if you borrow more, the chances are you will still be able to reduce your monthly payments as lenders fight for your business. The only problem is choosing the right loan from the 5,000 available on the market. Fortunately, the internet can help.

The web makes it easy to compare and contrast thousands of complex products at the click of a mouse. Uncompetitive lenders have nowhere to hide, and with borrowers wising up to the iniquities of early redemption penalties, expensive compulsory insurances and other small-print depth charges, lenders are having to work much harder to win our loyalty.

Forrester, a research company, predicts that more and more people will use the web to apply for mortgages. Forrester analyst Benjamin Ensor says: "The growing number of Britons looking on-line and their rising confidence in the internet have the potential to drive the on-line mortgage market from today's tiny £3 billion, or two per cent of annual UK mortgage sales, to a £15 billion market by 2006."

There are several excellent mortgage aggregator websites around. These help you to scour thousands of products, filtering your search according to your own criteria. For example, ThisIsMoney's mortgage-finder, powered by Moneysupermarket, gives you access to more than 4,500 loans from 150 lenders.

Simply fill in an eight-stage on-line questionnaire, giving details such as the current value of your home, the amount you want to borrow, and your employment status. Eventually, you are given a table with all the best deals ranked according to the true cost of borrowing over your chosen period. If the list is too large, you can filter out loans with redemption penalties, for example, or include only those offering cashback deals. If you find a deal you like, you can apply on-line there and then with most, but not all, of the lenders.

For those who like a little more handholding and the comfort of endorsement by mortgage experts, ThisisMoney also provides "best buy" selections made by London and Country, a leading mortgage broker.

Another good financial website to try is Moneynet. It has a useful remort-gage calculator that works out the savings you could make by switching lender, including any redemption penalties and arrangement fees you would have to pay. Just fill in the boxes with the relevant information, including the rate you're paying on your current mortgage, then select the types of mortgage you are interested in. You can restrict the search to one type of mortgage - for example, fixed-rate - or select the whole range, from standard variable to cashback. You can also choose to exclude loans that have redemption penalties applicable beyond any discounted, capped or fixed-rate period.

Moneynet assumes you must pay £400 in legal costs and £200 to have your home valued. It includes these figures when working out the savings.

You can also select the time period for the calculation to coincide with the number of years you think you might keep the loan. This is especially important because low initial interest rates on discounted mortgages can be misleading. Once the discounted period is over, your payments may rise sharply but redemption penalties may trap you in the loan. So choosing a five-year period, say, for the comparison will take this effect into account and give you a truer picture of the total cost.

Our table, on the right, of the best deals, shows the savings you would make by switching lender.

You can apply on-line and this process is handled by an affiliated firm of independent financial advisers, Inter-Alliance. Its representatives are also on hand to give mortgage advice over the phone. It's also worth looking at CreditWeb, another mortgage aggregator with telephone advice support.

It's a good idea to try several mortgage comparison sites as their databases often differ and they may not include deals exclusive to mortgage brokers. One such broker, Char-colonline, provides access to around 500 loans from 45 lenders, several of which are exclusive to it. If you apply on-line, you don't pay any broker fees and advice is available by telephone. You can simply go for its selection of best buys or dig deeper and use its "Mortgage Wizard", a detailed Q and A that eventually recommends specific loans to suit your needs.

thisismoney.co.uk
moneysupermarket.com
moneynet.co.uk
creditweb.co.uk
charcolonline.co.uk