Whenever you take out a new financial product, you should check out the interest rates. This applies to equity release as well as everything else. If you go for home reversion, then the interest rate will not be relevant, but for lifetime mortgages, then it certainly will be.
It can be tempting to assume that the product with the lowest interest rate will be the cheapest, but this may not be true. It is worth taking a look at the products in more detail to see exactly what they are offering.
Some may have a lower fixed interest for a while, that then goes up. This could be a good way to do things, but it is worth thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of this and any risk involved. With interest rates low, they will not go below what you are paying at a fixed rate, but once you move on to the variable rate you may be paying a lot more than other companies are charging.
Therefore it is important not to just look at the starting rates, but their rates for old customers. It is also worth looking in to any fees or charges because these need to be factored in to the costs as well as the rate of interest. You also need to consider whether you can afford to pay it back each month. Think about your monthly income and what you spend it on at the moment and whether you can afford the interest payments. You also need to think about the fact that interest rates could go up and so you need to be sure that you will be able to afford that.
At the moment interest rates are at a record low. Therefore when comparing them, you may find that many places have low rates. However, when they start to go up, some may rise more quickly than others. It can be a good idea to have a look at the history of that particular lender and see how quickly they tend to put their borrowing rates up after an interest rate rise. If they put them up quickly, then maybe it would be better to look elsewhere. Finding this information could be tricky but looking at reviews online and on financial forums and also talking to people who are customers with that lender, should help you to get an idea of what they are like with regards to how quickly the change interest rates.