I despair. It seems that an increasing number of homeowners are remortgaging to clear other debts.

According to Moneyextra.com, the average remortgage is now £122,541, up 7 per cent on a year ago, partly because of people using the equity in their homes to pay off other borrowing.

No doubt they like the idea of spreading their repayments over up to 25 years (or more) because it reduces the monthly cost, making them feel like they’re paying less.

But this is a total illusion – even if they’re reducing their interest rate by moving what they owe from credit cards or personal loans.

The very fact that the new repayments are spread over decades means they’re going to be paying one hell of a lot of interest, and it will probably cost them far more in the long run.

Remember, the whole idea of remortgaging is to save cash, not throw it away.

Apparently, we don’t learn when it comes to the “hidden” costs of moving house.

These include all the expenses that we have to cough up, often without feeling the final bill is justified – legal and estate agents’ fees, stamp duty, removal costs and so on – and they leave us almost £24,000 poorer over our lifetimes.

Despite knowing these costs come up time and again, only half of those questioned in a Co-op Bank survey had a contingency fund to cover them, relying instead on borrowing.

True, things like stamp duty are fixed costs which just have to be swallowed, but you can shop around to get a better deal on many of the others.

And when it comes to the hidden costs attached to your mortgage, a bit of knowledge goes a long way.

Reading the small print may not be fun, but it could save you thousands in the long run.

Mortgage giant Halifax has found that sneaky money making schemes don’t always pay.

The UK’s biggest mortgage lender has revealed that its share of the new mortgages market slumped to 8 per cent in the first six months of the year, compared to a 20 per cent share of outstanding home loans.

It admits this is partly because it backtracked on its policy of offering new customers better deals than existing ones.

But - surprise, surprise - upping its rates for newbies didn’t help it retain existing customers or attract new ones, so Halifax has gone back to its old ways of offering the latter better rates and terms.

Could it be that customers are getting wise to the fact that the big banks don’t necessarily offer the best deals, whether you’re an existing customer or a new one?

With mortgages, as with all other financial services, it pays to shop around.

House prices are still growing at more than 10 per cent a year, despite the Bank of England’s efforts to cool the market by raising its base interest rate four times since last August.

That’s why the smart money is on another rise when the Bank’s monetary policy committee meets next week.

According to Nationwide Building Society, the average home now costs £181,584, a rise of more than £1,200 in just a month – and almost £17,000 up on the same time last year.

If the Bank sticks to increasing its base lending rate by 0.25 percentage points, as it has the past four times, someone buying that typical house with a £150,000 repayment mortgage could expect to pay around £22 a month more.

If it decides to get really nasty and go for a 0.50 percentage point hike, it would cost them an extra £44 – or £528 a year.

So, if you have a variable rate mortgage, or a fixed-rate deal that’s coming to an end, it could be a very good time to look into remortgaging to cut your costs.

It was a black day today for the six million-plus UK borrowers with a variable rate mortgage, as the base lending rate hit its highest level for six years.

The Bank of England’s latest increase means we (myself included) can expect to pay more for the roof over our head from next month.

The 0.25 percentage point hike, to 5.5 per cent, is the fourth since August and will add around £15 a month to a typical £100,000 repayment loan.

And the situation is unlikely to improve any time soon.

Michael Coogan, director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, warns, ‘Borrowers must expect rates to remain at or around their current levels for the foreseeable future and plan their finances on that basis.’

Time to consider remortaging to cut your costs?