Question for mortgage advisors - how long to process mortgage redemption?

Charlton_Taz

Hi all - I am wondering whether my expectations are too high as regards the length of time to move my mortgage from one provider to another - I thought it could all be done on the same day?

My scenario was that my current tracker deal with the Coop finished on 31 March. I am moving the mortgage to First Direct and after being accepted by First Direct I informed them that they could move the mortgage on 1 April (i.e. first day I had no redemption penalties on the Coop mortgage). It has taken till today (9 April) for a redemption figure to be faxed to First Direct from the Coop, and now First Direct are telling me that it could take them up to a further week to actual transfer the mortgage!

As I said before, I thought this could all be done on one day (I'm sure when I've swapped mortgages previously that was how its done)....and I am a little annoyed as this month is now costing me a lot more in interest on my mortgage than I thought it would...and that is only going up each day that I wait for this transfer to occur!

Hence, I am wondering how long the actual redemption should usually take i.e. should First Direct have started contacting Coop before 1 April? (they have told me they first asked for the redemption figure on 28 March)? How long is realistic for the Coop to reply (i.e. they finally got a fax through to First Direct today), and after all this, is it reasonable that it could take another week for the mortgage to actually transfer over to First Direct. TBH, I'm still annoyed if these are realistic timescales as I presume First Direct could have just kicked the process off a whole lot earlier in March to get it completed by 1 April! Thanks for any comments!

Leon_W

It depends on when you applied to First Direct who, in all fairness, have little to do with the actual swap over as this is done by the solicitors.

A reasonable time scale in my opinion would be to apply for any remortgage to another provider in good time, say 6 to 8 weeks.

Charlton_Taz

All the application forms / valuation etc were completed in November 2009 (once an offer is issued First Direct allow you to keep it for 6 months hence was fine for 1 April redemption date) and the offer from them was issued around that same time too. Hence, I didn't think there would be much for them to do to swap the mortgage over on 1 April (am using their in-house solicitors too!)

Leon_W

If that's the case then that is really poor.

I would be inclined to look to the solicitors being at fault as they would have received a copy of the mortgage offer at the same time as you and should easily have had enough time to get things in order.

It does happen with these "free" legal deals and sometimes you do need to poke them a bit to make sure everything is ready to go when you want it to.

All the best.