Buyer beware: Portability Small Print!

MJMum

---

boardster

We just had a seller come close to pulling out of a sale because they realised that they had 3 months to port mortgage or fees of over £12,000.00 to pay.

Wonder how long before these fees deemed illegal??

pknottm

Really sorry for you mjmum!! It does seem very unfair especially as you were told something different by their customer services. Do they have a record of these phone calls?

It does seem unfair that you only get your fees back if you reinstate the same mortgage, which was impossible in your case!

We also sold in Dec and paid £2000 early redemption charges to the Coventry and went into rented. However, the Coventry have a much fairer policy in that you can take any of their mortgages within 6 months...page 14 of http://www.coventrybuildingsociety.co.uk/pdfs/07171.pdf
We're moving again in 2 weeks, so will get our charges refunded.

Is there no way YBS will change their minds?

Deals_2

whether this is a good article for Martin and the team again to look into and maybe take to the FSA to see how "legal" these undertakings really are. just a thought. I think mortgage companies get away with way too much. no wonder that banks may so much profit!!!

MJMum wrote:

We had yet another little sigh in the world of will-we-ever-buy-this-house today, and I thought that I would post about it here as a warning to others (and so you can all have a laugh at our expense )

We remortgaged in Mar 2005 to a 2 year fixed rate deal with YBS. We knew we were likely to move within 2 years, but were happy with the fact that our new deal was "portable" to the next property.

Unfortunately, what has happened is that we paid off our mortgage when we sold our property in Nov and moved into rented accomodation. Before we did that, we made several phone calls to YBS customer services checking the terms of the portability, and were repeatedly told that so long as we took out a new mortgage within 6 months, early repayment charge would be refunded.

Anyway, fast forward to today, and about to exchange contracts, with completion set for April. That'd be OK, right, since April is only 5 months later? Well, actually, no. YBS rang today to say that we must complete before end of Mar or forfeit the early repayment charge refund. :eek:

BECAUSE THE PRODUCT EXPIRES ON 31 MAR 2007.

We are talking about more than £4k here - enough almost to tip the balance between affording or not affording this property.

So we are now trying to rearrange dates (not easy due to where/how we deposited the equity from the house sale - we will still lose quite a bit in interest by having to withdraw at the end rather than beginning of a month). And if the other side won't budge, the deal's potentially off altogether.

All because we didn't read the small print on page 34 of the mortgage terms and conditions.


In summary: read the small print (all 48 pages, veeeery carefully) and don't believe anything you are told verbally by customer services.

gazza007

I have been in a similar position to you, not owning a house for a few months & porting all of my last YBS mortgage within the exclusivity period. I also needed a new additional new product to buy my new house, fortunately after a worrying time I completed last week on the 2nd house, that I have tried to buy after my 1st vendor was a waste of space. I called YBS today to find out how long it would be before I got my penalty money back.

I have always found YBS very fair & helpful, I would stongly recommend that you contact somebody of higher authority & quote your dates & times etc, they should have records. I would also try to complete ASAP if you can to avoid getting near the 6 month period even if they will allow it.
Good luck

MJMum

---

gazza007

Keep us posted on your progress
Good luck