Flexible Mortgage

08-October-2025

08-October-2025 13:51

in Private clients

by Sam Hodgson

A professional mortgage broker explaining the details of a flexible mortgage document to a young couple.

Many people see mortgages as a rigid product - a long-term loan set to 25 years with little room for adjustment. The truth is very different.

At Clifton Private Finance, we work with the full spectrum of banks and specialist lenders to offer our customers the greatest level of flexibility when choosing their mortgages.

It’s an important consideration, as a flexible mortgage is more likely to offer the buying power you need, with a structure that strengthens your ability to comfortably meet repayments.

Read on as we take a look at some of the many ways you can tweak a mortgage to better suit your needs.

And to get a free quote today:

1. Why Flexibility Matters For a Mortgage
2. Term Flexibility
3. Overpayments and Payment Holidays
4. Remortgaging and Early Repayment Charges
5. Interest Only and Part-and-Part Mortgages
6. Flexible Mortgage Solutions with Clifton Private Finance

Why Flexibility Matters For a Mortgage

A mortgage is a long-term investment, which for many people stretches across the majority of their working life. Decades ago, careers and lifestyles tended to be a lot more static than they are today, and a basic 25-year mortgage with a long fixed term met the needs of the vast majority of lenders.

Today, however, mortgage borrowers need to be able to adapt quickly, fitting the mortgage in with changing career paths, family commitments, and even moving to different countries.

At Clifton Private Finance, we often work with people who are looking for something special with their mortgage. Ensuring that it works around you, not that you have to work around it, is one of our specialties.

A flexible mortgage means:

Being more able to buy the home you want
Giving you the room needed to change and advance your career
Understanding the complexities of partnership and family lives
Adapting easily to changes in your circumstances
Unlocking the money poured into your home as equity, providing funds if needed in the future

There are many variables that can be adjusted with your mortgage, giving you the power to have a home loan that works for you.

Term Flexibility

One of the most important aspects of a mortgage that can be adjusted is the length of mortgage, commonly called the mortgage term.

A standard mortgage term is 25 years and many mortgage calculations are based on you repaying your home gradually over those 25 years - but you don’t need to stick to standard terms.

Many mortgage lenders are happy to adjust your term, both shortening it and lengthening as you need.

There are advantages and disadvantages to either, but by being able to set the term to your best interests, the mortgage can be correctly configured for you.

Advantages of a Short Term Mortgage

When you have a shorter term mortgage - say, 10 years or 15 years - it means that in exchange for larger repayments, your mortgage will be paid off a lot sooner.

That can give you a much greater level of comfort later on, knowing that you no longer have to make a monthly mortgage payment and freeing up those funds for other use.

Other benefits include:

Building equity faster - Equity is the amount of your home that you own with no debt associated with it, and it can be used in the future to secure other loans, or simply to provide cash in the bank if you sell. Property equity is a powerful asset that can be leveraged to seize opportunities in the future, for example: when moving up to a bigger home, to provide funds for home improvements, or even to consolidate debts if there are financial challenges to come.
Getting a mortgage when older - Once you pass 50, it becomes more difficult to get a ‘standard’ 25-year mortgage, because lenders will expect the loan to be repaid before you reach 75. By shortening the term, you increase lender confidence and meet their need to have everything paid off in time.
Less interest paid - Clearing the debt sooner means you will spend fewer years accumulating interest. The quicker it’s paid off, the less interest you will end up generating, making the overall cost of the mortgage far smaller.
A secure home sooner - Many people want the comfort and peace of mind of knowing that no matter what happens, they always have somewhere to lay their head. By paying off your mortgage sooner, you bring that day closer, giving you the freedom to live an easier life, less anxious about security for you and your family.

Advantages of a Long Term Mortgage

While a longer term mortgage means you’re paying off a lot later, it can be a huge benefit to your current life, cutting mortgage payments to a viable level for your lifestyle.

The benefits of extending the term include:

Lower monthly repayments - By taking longer to pay off the loan, you spread the cost of your home to a more manageable level. This will mean your mortgage is far less of a burden throughout your life, allowing you to enjoy more of your money each month.
Greater chance of acceptance - Lenders undertake strict affordability and stress tests when evaluating your mortgage. By increasing the term, you make it more likely that you pass affordability checks and boost your chance of getting the mortgage.
Shifting the financial weight to later in your career - Most of us build up our salaries, earning a little more each year as we progress. By extending the mortgage term, you shift the burden of repayment from your younger self earning less, to your older self who will hopefully have an easier time of it.

It’s also worth remembering that your mortgage term isn’t set in stone. With many remortgage options during the long life of your mortgage, you can decide later on to cut the term down or extend it as needed, giving you the best of both worlds.

It’s all part of that mortgage flexibility that’s possible when you partner with a knowledgeable broker like Clifton Private Finance.

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Overpayments and Payment Holidays

Checking your mortgage terms before signing is an important part of the process. Too often, mortgage borrowers are keen to move forward and do not give enough consideration to some of the finer points of their mortgage.

Two things that can make all the difference a few years along are overpayments and payment holidays.

A truly flexible mortgage will have some room for both overpayments and payment holidays. In some cases, they are treated separately, while in others they are linked, such that you can only have a payment holiday if you have previously made overpayments.

Understanding how your mortgage is structured from the outset is essential to avoid problems later on.

At Clifton Private Finance, we talk you through the full terms to make sure you make a fully informed decision - sometimes it can feel a little laborious, but it helps you work confidently with your mortgage.

Not all mortgages have provision for overpayments or payment holidays.

Mortgage Overpayments

Overpayments are a good way to take control of your mortgage, lowering the interest that it generates over the full term, and sometimes shaving months (or years) from the final length.

Overpayments are not always allowed, as the lender may not consider them beneficial. When you make an overpayment, you reduce the mortgage balance, and the interest over the term, thus effectively dropping the profit the lender expected to make on the mortgage. While it’s generally all upside for you, lenders like to keep it under control.

For many lenders, this means capping the overpayment allowance to a 10% per year limit. Some lenders increase this to 20%, but it is rare to have an unlimited allowance for overpayment.

Another benefit of overpayments with many lenders, is that it opens the door to future mortgage payment holidays.

Payment Holidays

If you are struggling to meet your monthly repayments, your flexible mortgage terms may have room for a payment holiday. During this time, you will not have to make the regular monthly repayment.

It is essential to understand that while you don’t repay your mortgage, interest is still accruing. This may mean that your mortgage payments increase after the payment holiday, or that the length of your mortgage is extended accordingly. In some cases, both may happen. A payment holiday is meant to help you through a period of financial difficulty – for example, if you find yourself out of employment or are planning for a period of reduced income, such as when taking maternity or paternity leave.

Here are a few of the different forms:

No payment is needed - Lenders may offer a full holiday for 1 month, 3 months, or in some cases, 6 months.
Payments are offset against previous overpayments - In some cases, lenders are willing to provide a payment holiday that effectively ‘uses up’ the funds that you paid in as overpayments earlier in the mortgage. Once the overpayments are used up, the payment holiday ends.
The mortgage moves to interest only for a short term - Technically a hardship arrangement over a true payment holiday, this will lower your repayment amount rather than removing it entirely, leaving you just to cover the interest portion of the monthly payment. Hardship arrangements can be extremely helpful if your finances are stretched and you are unable to meet your full mortgage commitment.

Note that not all lenders offer the flexibility of payment holidays. If this is a level of flexibility you may look to in the future, it should form part of your early mortgage planning.

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Remortgaging and Early Repayment Charges

Remortgaging is the most powerful tool for mortgaged homeowners.

A full remortgage completely replaces your existing mortgage with a new one, giving you the choice to consider new terms, a different interest rate, a larger mortgage to release equity for other use, or even a smaller mortgage with an additional payment from your savings to reduce your loan overhead.

Remortgaging represents the ultimate mortgage flexibility; however, it may not always be possible to remortgage easily, due to Early Repayment Charges (ERCs).

ERCs are a way for your lender to balance the potential loss of their customer to a remortgage and can add a considerable cost to the remortgage process.

Importantly though, lenders are keen to be flexible and tend to impose the strongest ERCs during the early years of the mortgage, or as part of the conditions of a fixed term period.

It is typical that borrowers obtain a short fixed term (often two or five years) that has substantial ERCs attached to it, with the flexibility that allows for a full remortgage once this term is over without incurring additional costs.

This way, you can refinance efficiently once your mortgage is up for a renewal, choosing to remain with your current lender or explore the market for alternatives.

Interest Only and Part-and-Part Mortgages

While most residential mortgages are structured as both interest and capital repayment mortgages, the flexibility does exist to consider both interest-only mortgages and part-and-part mortgages.

These mean lower monthly repayments but add a final ‘exit’ repayment at the end of the term, covered through either selling the property or remortgaging.

Interest-Only Mortgages

An interest-only mortgage has a far lower monthly payment than a standard repayment mortgage. As the name suggests, this is because you pay only the interest on the loan.

At the end of the term (for example, 20 years), you still owe the full balance of the original debt. Because historically, property prices have risen, it is typical that the amount owed represents a lower portion of the property value than the original mortgage loan-to-value, resulting in some return from the investment.

Consider a property bought for £200,000 on an interest-only mortgage at 5%. Each month, £834 would need to be paid to cover the interest portion of the mortgage.

After 20 years, £200,000 would then be owed to the mortgage lender to repay the capital.

However, if the property had risen in value to be worth £350,000 at the end of the term, it could be sold to repay the mortgage balance, with £150,000 profit that can be used to secure a new property.

A comparable standard repayment mortgage at the same rate would cost £1320, meaning the interest only option saves just under £500 per month.

Part-and-Part Mortgages

A part-and-part mortgage combines a repayment mortgage structure with an interest-only structure, tailoring the mortgage to be part repayment, and part interest-only.

This results in a situation similar to an interest-only mortgage but with a smaller balance at the end to repay.

Often a part-and-part mortgage can be helpful during the early years of a mortgage to keep repayments low, and then remortgaged to a repayment mortgage at a later stage - another example of mortgage flexibility.

To learn more about the finer nuances of a part-and-part mortgage, look to our knowledge base.