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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 8:58 am and is filed under UK Mortgages, UK Personal Finance, ReMortgages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.