Transfering a mortgage to a re-mortgage - charges?

DrGronod

Hi

Having pulled out of a sale and staying put, we already have a new mortgage arranged with Britannia but now require a re-mortgage instead to release some equity of our house for an extension etc. Having paid the admin and arrangement fees of £100 and £399 respectively, it appears these are not "transferable" at all to a re-mortgage. I knew they were not refundable, but had hoped they would be transferable. (This has been checked with head office by a local Britannia mortgage advisor - she was a bit disappointed by this news as well!).

Has anyone else experience of this - is this standard practice? Just trying to find out what else goes on elsewhere before a heated letter to head office! I thought someone like Britannia might have been a bit more flexible and friendly over an issue like this (compared say to one of the big banks).

Otherwise we will just have to write this off as part of the costs of pulling the sale (which hasn't been *too* bad in retrospect - have avoided some biggies like the survey and major sols costs etc). Britannia will thus lose our business to the Halifax who currently hold our current (small) mortgage for which we'll try and increase the value (thus at least avoiding their redemption fee of £175, which is pretty steep considering it is a bog-standard one!). But obviously would prefer to save the £499 instead having already paid that.

Thanks
DrG

TangentMan

I am surprised by the arragement fee (which i assume is a product fee), to be honest. Admin fees, well you paid for them to do work and you now want them to do more, so the admin fee is covering a straight cost.

Unless the product you have is not applicable for remortgages and only for new purchases (for whatever reason) i can't see why you would need a new product fee. Unless of course they have subsequently withdrawn the product? In which case your new application is just that, a new applciation on a new product. You might want to consider asking if they have a "product switch fee". Might be a £100 rather than £400.

Your comment about it being a BS and more flexible is interesting. Remember that a BS society's core products are savings and mortgages. They are often more ruthless than the banks when it comes to fees and charges. Mainly because they have less revenue streams than one of the bigger players.

AndrewSmith

This is a good argument for opting initially to 'add' the arrangement/application fees to the loan.

Doing this you dont pay them upfront, and can opt then at completion to pay them once you know that you are taking the money. Costs you no more, but saves you losing them if you don't proceed.

Andy

regularsaver1

The further advance fee with halifax is £275 so you'd have that fee

i'm surprised that Britannia can't just increase the amount of the new mortgage with the advance???

DrGronod

Thanks for the comments.
I will try and push Britannia on this - not particularly much hope but you never know. The products aren't quite the same for mortgage/remortgage, but very similar. Being a Unison member may help (Britannia are big on their trade union partnerships - esp. with Unison).

Good point about the Halifax advance fee - hadn't spotted that. I was going to say I would have to balance this against a HomeOwner loan but it looks virtually the same deal in the end having found the details.

And very good point about adding the fees into the loan. I could never quite see the point of this before (when of course there seemed to be no reason we would pull out - until something cropped up completely out of the blue, as they do sometimes). Should be top of any list of "money saving tips" for house buyers (or not as the case may be!).

DrG

regularsaver1

homeowner loan is separate charge & loan to the mortgage with a fee of £299, maximum £25k

whereas further advance is increasing mortgage £275 limit of affordablity and house value