Mortgage Application Fees...

Dave_Rob

Last year (September) our current mortgage deal ran out (Alliance & Leicester). It was a fixed rate tracker and as it didn't rise too much we had decided to take our time and search for a deal that suited us. Britannia came out on top and in October we decided to start the application process. I class my wife and myself as having a little bit of intelligence (both educated to degree level) with a little bit of knowledge of the mortgage market. We both left our appointment being lead to believe that we would only have to pay the arragement fee (unfortunately we had toadd it to the mortgage due to the size of the fee) when we had had the formal offer of a mortgage and we had accepted it. We paid for the valuation up front. It was less than 4 weeks later that our current mortgage became a much better deal and we decided that we didn't want to progress. I wrote a letter at the beginning of November telling them that we didn't want to proceed, we hadn't even got to the solicitors stage with only the valuation completed and no formal offer being made yet. I thought that was the end of it...at the beginning of January I started getting calls about the progress and 3 calls from them later, asking the same question over and over again, I received a letter telling me that they were going to take the arangement and valuation fee from my account in 14 days!!! I called them and explained that we had not been told we had a fee due as we had paid for the valuation and it had been so long after they had been told we didn't want to proceed, they would not budge!!

I have delayed them taking any money so that we can confirm our position. Will we have to pay? has anyone else been left in the same position? What are the options over this or do we not have any? Seems as though they weren't clear when we went through the paperwork and feel it is unfair to expect to take this money...esp giving so little notice. They must be making a fortune from this in the current climate!!!

KTF

When you sent the letter did you check that they had actually received it via a phone call or did you just assume that it had got there and would be acted upon?

If the lender had no knowledge of the letter then they had no reason not to proceed.

Edit: You say that you left the meeting with the understanding that there were no fees apart from the product fee but then you paid for the valuation? Was it a fees free deal or not?

Dave_Rob

we knew there were fees but the way it was explained the arrangement fees would only need to be paid upon completion or if we pulled out after we had accepted the formal offer of the mortgage. The valuation fee was always meant to be paid.

In answer to your other question...no I didn't follow the letter up. In hindsight I should have done but made an assumption that it had been received as I didn't hear anything else from them (well until the new year)