Help and advice requested on Santander Early repayment Charge

Irons85

Hi - I found out yesterday, just a few hours before we were due to transfer funds for completion on a house we are buying that an Early Repayment Charge (ERC) was applicable to our redemption statement, the figure of £5k is not insignificant and has caused no end of stress trying to source the funds and not affect completion.

We have in writing from our solicitors that this charge would not apply in the completion statement provided to us before we made the commitment to exchange.

Santander have now insisted this is applicable despite providing verbal confirmation to ourselves and our solicitors the ERC would not apply.

Does anyone have advice on who is at fault here? Clearly the blame is shared between Santander and the solicitors but I would be trying to get the ERC removed as a goodwill gesture from Santander instead of following it up with my solicitors formally due to an inaccurate completion statement provided and written confirmation the penalty would not apply.

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.

anselld

You will get nowhere trying to blame solicitors IMHO. You would be better to use the Solicitor to bring pressure on Santander to honour their verbal agreement to waive the charge.

G_M

What do the terms and conditions of your mortgage say......?

(why do people not read contracts when they sign them....?)

star02

Are you taking a new mortgage with Santander on the new property? My redemption showed the ERC but this did not get paid as used them on new property. I believe my solicitor had to fax them confirmation was going ahead with new mortgage deal (to fax number on redemption figure paperwork).

Richard_Webster

Santander certainly used to have this rather unhelpful practice of telling solicitors that an early repayment charge was not applicable if a new mortgage with them was being taken out on the same terms as the old one - the solicitor was supposed to know about the terms of the old mortgage - why should he?

The client could say it was the same but it might not be, and the solicitor has to give a personal undertaking to pay off the mortgage to the buyer's solicitor, so must get it right.

I could never trust them unless I got a very specific statement that if new account number xxxxxxxx was completed at the same time as the redemption of old account zzzzzzzz no penalty was payable.

I would want to get this issue clear in writing before contracts were exchanged because a sum like £5K is pretty significant to the average client!