Borrowing again, without touching your mortgage.

What it actually is

Your mortgage is the first charge on your home. A second charge is another loan, from a different lender, secured on the same property and ranking behind it. Your existing mortgage stays exactly as it is — same lender, same rate, same end date.

That last part is the whole reason the product exists. If you are on a rate you could not get again today, or you would face a substantial early repayment charge for leaving it, then remortgaging to release money can cost far more than the money is worth. A second charge leaves the first one alone.

The thing you must understand before you sign anything

If you are using this to clear credit cards, overdrafts or personal loans, understand what is changing. Those debts are not secured on your home. A second charge is.

Monthly payments often fall, because the borrowing is spread over a much longer period — and that can be genuine relief when the pressure is real. But spreading the same debt over more years generally means paying more in total, and it moves the consequence of falling behind from a default on your credit file to the roof over your head.

Sometimes it is still the right decision. What it should never be is a decision made quickly, or made because it was the only thing someone offered you.

When it tends to be the honest answer

• You have a rate worth protecting, or an early repayment charge that makes remortgaging uneconomic.
• Your circumstances changed after you took the mortgage — adverse credit since completion, a move to self-employment — and your current lender will not lend more.
• You need the money for something that lasts, such as work on the house, rather than to plug a gap that will reopen.

When it is not

• The shortfall is ongoing. If the numbers do not work month to month, borrowing against the house postpones the problem and raises the stakes.
• Free debt advice would serve you better. StepChange and Citizens Advice are free, independent, and will not sell you anything. If that is where you should be, I will say so and I would rather you went.
• You are close to the end of a fixed period anyway, in which case waiting and doing it properly may cost far less.

How adverse credit changes it

Second charge lending is regulated in the same way as your mortgage, so the affordability assessment is real, not a formality. Credit history matters, but the equity in the property carries more weight than it does on a first charge — which is precisely why people declined for a remortgage are sometimes offered this instead.

Be careful with that. "Easier to arrange" is not the same as "better for you". The question worth asking is not whether you can get it, but whether you should take it.

If you tell me what the money is for and what is on your file, I will tell you honestly which route is cheaper over the whole term — including when that route is to leave things alone.