September is one of the busiest months of the year for remortgaging.

Almost 90,000 homeowners will go in search of a better deal on nearly £46 billion worth of home loans, says lender Abbey.

On average, they’ll spend just under seven hours shopping around.

Nici Audhlam-Gardiner, Abbey’s head of mortgages, says: “Re-mortgaging might be a time-consuming process, but it’s worth investing the time and effort so that you don’t have to invest too much of your hard-earned cash when your current mortgage deal comes to an end.

“In particular, customers coming to the end of fixed-rate deals in the next month will find it hard to match their previous mortgage deal as rates have gone up – meaning good deals become even more important.”

That’s why, no matter how boring you might think mortgage shopping is, it’s time well spent.

The difference between a good deal and a bad one can be thousands of pounds of interest – and a lot of grief – over the years.

For many people, a major step in the remortgaging process will be deciding whether to go for another fixed-rate deal or to opt instead for a discounted variable rate or a base rate tracker.

Several experts are saying fixed rates look expensive – and that today’s decision by the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee to leave rates on hold makes it more likely the next move will be downwards.

If they’re right, a tracker could be a very wise choice indeed.