Owing to the current depressed property market and the increasing availability of competitive remortgage deals, many home owners who may have been contemplating of moving this year have decided to renovate, rebuild or extend or add value to their current home.

Whatever your needs; a remortgage can help you raise money to fund your home improvements. Whether you need an extra bedroom for a growing family or a conservatory or extension to give you extra living space, improving your home can be beneficial to you as well as adding value to your property.

There have been recent claims from the Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, that the government will "put its money where its mouth is" in helping families to build their own homes. These claims are likely to have excited a lots of prospective house builders. If you are planning to do any house building work, there are several things to understand long before you reach the building stage.

Firstly, you will need detailed plans for the proposed work. This may involve hiring a surveyor or architect to provide drawings and plans for how your building project will look when completed. They can also help manage the build project.

Always make sure that you shop around for the best tradesmen for the job. Take recommendations from friends or family if you can and obtain several quotes to compare prices. And, make sure that the work is going to add value to your home and that the improvements will be in keeping with the demands of the local property market.

Somebody will also need to manage the project. Ideally, you should do this as you'll need to make decisions if anything goes wrong or if the plans needs to be altered,. After all, it is your home! But of course this can be time consuming for large projects, so you may wish to appoint or hire someone to do this for you.

If you are making any alterations to the structure of your property, building an extension or converting rooms, you'll need to apply for planning permission from your local council. You will need to submit the plans that were drawn up by the surveyor or architect.

If you are managing the project yourself then you may be responsible for obtaining planning consent and adhering to building regulations. If you hire specialists, however, they may be responsible.

The first thing you need to arrange before you doing anything else is the finance to complete the work. Lots of people start looking for competitive remortgage rates long in advance of the job to make sure they have access to the requisite level of funds; bearing in mind most building works run over budget!

By applying for a remortgage, you can also often find a cheaper deal, so you will be benefiting from the exercise in more ways than one. With interest rates set to increase this year, it would be a good move to fix your interest rate now while rates are still very low. Once the base rate increases, so will the interest rates on the mortgage products.