Protecting a Sub-2% Rate on a Home Move: Porting and Topping Up With the Same Lender

At a glance

The enquiry

A couple approached Drake after having an offer accepted on a £585,000 home. They were selling their current property, valued at around £420,000, and wanted to understand the most cost-effective way to fund the move.

Their instinct, understandably, was that moving house meant starting again with a brand new mortgage, and they had assumed they would simply shop around for the best rate available.

Two things made their situation worth looking at closely.

First, they held a genuinely strong rate: a five-year fixed at 1.79% with 26 months still to run, taken out when pricing was far lower than today’s market. Second, that deal carried an early repayment charge of 3% of the outstanding balance, roughly £7,440 on their £248,000, if they were to redeem it early.

What the clients wanted

• To buy the £585,000 property without overpaying on their mortgage.
• To avoid throwing away a rate they knew they could not replace in the current market.
• To understand whether the early repayment charge left them stuck, or whether there was a way around it.

How Drake approached it

As a whole-of-market broker handling the residential mortgage directly, Drake compared two routes on a like-for-like basis rather than reacting to any single figure.

The first route was redeeming the existing loan, paying the ERC, and arranging a completely new mortgage for the full £377,000 with whichever lender offered the sharpest deal. The second was porting the existing 1.79% rate to the new property and topping up the additional borrowing with the same lender.

The comparison was run over a comparable period, taking in the ported rate, the cost of the top-up, the early repayment charge, and product and arrangement fees, rather than the headline rate alone.

Route one: redeem and start again

To fund the purchase entirely on a new loan, the clients would have paid the £7,440 early repayment charge and lost their 1.79% rate on the whole £248,000.

Even with competitive new-lender pricing on the full £377,000, the loss of the below-market rate on the ported portion, combined with the ERC, made this the more expensive route once the numbers were run over the remaining fixed period. The market simply had nothing that could replace a 1.79% rate on that slice of the borrowing.

Route two: port and top up with the existing lender

Porting allowed the clients to carry their existing £248,000 balance across to the new property on the same 1.79% rate for the remaining 26 months, with the early repayment charge waived because the deal was treated as a continuation rather than a redemption.

The additional £129,000 they needed was taken as a top-up on one of the same lender’s current products from its live range.

The clients passed the lender’s current affordability assessment and criteria checks comfortably, with stable employed incomes and no change in circumstances since their original application, so there was no obstacle to the port or the top-up proceeding on this basis.

This mattered, because porting is a fresh application against the new property and is never guaranteed simply because a client was approved before.

Why this was the most cost-effective outcome

• The strong rate was protected. The £248,000 stayed at 1.79% rather than being surrendered to the market, saving meaningful interest over the remaining fixed term.
• The early repayment charge was avoided entirely. Because the existing deal was ported rather than redeemed, the £7,440 charge fell away.
• Only the extra borrowing was priced at today’s rates. The £129,000 top-up was the sole portion exposed to current pricing, keeping the blended cost of the overall mortgage low.
• No affordability obstacle. The lender’s current affordability calculation supported the higher total borrowing, so the whole arrangement could sit with a single, familiar lender.

Related: Porting Your Mortgage vs. Starting Again: What Really Happens When You Move

The result

The clients completed their move with a mortgage in two parts:

1. their original £248,000 at 1.79% carried across intact
2. a £129,000 top-up on the same lender’s current range

They kept a rate they could not have found anywhere else, avoided a £7,440 early repayment charge, and limited their exposure to current pricing to only the additional borrowing they genuinely needed. Consolidating everything with one lender also kept the arrangement simple to manage going forward.