You have a week to slash the cost of new mortgage!

One lender is restricting mortgage fees, so long as you apply within the next seven days.

When arranging a mortgage, a big factor to consider is the fee you have to fork out for the mortgage itself. These can set you back thousands of pounds. However, one lender has announced that for just one week the fees it charges will be significantly reduced.

A week of reduced fees

From Thursday 19 May, Yorkshire Building Society will be cutting product fees on its mortgages for a week.

The lender currently boasts one of the more extreme mortgage pricing strategies in the market. If you want its lowest rates – and they are some of the lowest rates around – you’ll really have to pay for them, with product fees of up to a whopping £1,995. That’s an awful lot of cash to hand over upfront for a decent mortgage, or even worse, to add to your mortgage debt, thereby paying interest on that fee.

However, it also offers a number of mortgages with a higher initial rate, but with product fees of between £95 and £495.

But for the next week, you won’t pay a fee higher than £995 when taking out a mortgage with Yorkshire Building Society. That’s a saving of as much as £1,000 when going for some of the best deals in the market today, a sum not to be sniffed at! Below are some of my favourite deals currently on offer from Yorkshire.

Of course, if you want to get a great mortgage rate, without having to pay through the nose in product fees, it’s not just Yorkshire that offers a great deal.

Halving rates

Mortgage fees is thankfully one area which has seen some real competition in recent weeks, with fellow lenders Nationwide Building Society and Yorkshire and Clydesdale Banks halving the fees charged on certain deals.

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With Nationwide all mortgages which carried a £999 fee have been cut to £499. And Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks have halved their fees for anyone taking out a mortgage with the bank before 2 July.

The deals from these lenders are not exactly market-leading, but they may still be worth considering.

Low-fee kings!

However, in my opinion, if you’re determined to pay as small a fee as possible, two lenders stand ahead of the pack – HSBC and First Direct.

HSBC has long offered some of the best variable rate mortgages in the market, but in recent weeks the lender has further improved its deals, ditching fees altogether. If you take out a variable mortgage from HSBC before 5 June, you won’t have to pay a penny for the privilege.

Here are some of my favourite HSBC tracker deals. I’m not a fan of discount mortgages, so all of the below deals are term trackers:

First Direct also offers some fabulous tracker mortgage deals, with some costing you just £99 to snap up, an absolute bargain. Its fixed rates aren't too bad either.

Not everyone wants to go for a tracker rate though, in which case ING Direct is worth a look as the lender has ditched product fees on its range of fixed rate mortgages. Here are some of the lender’s best deals currently on offer.

Getting advice

Sadly, many of the lenders I’ve highlighted don’t work with mortgage brokers. In order to access their mortgages, you’ll need to go to the lender direct. That’s fine if you’re an experienced or confident borrower, and you are happy to go it alone when applying for a mortgage.

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However, in my opinion many borrowers have a lot to gain from making use of a broker’s expertise. For starters, they can work out exactly which type of mortgage best fits the borrower's attitude to risk. What’s more, the brokers can offer some guidance on which lenders are most likely to want to deal with a borrower in your circumstances. And finally, while they may not have access to lenders like HSBC, there are plenty of lenders that you’ll never have heard of that only lend through brokers.

You can pick the brains of our fee-free mortgage team via email, over the phone or instant messenger. Just head over to our mortgage centre.

More: What the next year holds in store for house prices | Don’t try to cash in on your home like this!

Use lovemoney.com's innovative new mortgage tool now to find the best mortgage for you online.

At lovemoney.com, you can research all the best deals yourself using our online mortgage service, or speak directly to a whole-of-market, fee-free lovemoney.com broker. Call freephone 0800 804 8045 or email mortgages@lovemoney.com for more help.

This article aims to give information, not advice. Always do your own research and/or seek out advice from an FSA-regulated broker (such as one of our brokers here at lovemoney.com), before acting on anything contained in this article.

Finally, we tend to only give the initial rate of a deal in our articles, but any deal which lasts for a shorter period than your mortgage term may revert to the lender's standard variable rate or a tracker rate when the deal ends. Before you take out a deal, you should always try to find out from your lender what its standard variable rate is and how it will be determined in the future. Make sure you take all this information into account when comparing different deals.

Your home or property may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.