Exit Fee

grumpy_john

Not sure if this is the right forum.
Just finished paying off my mortgage but Santander want me to pay a exit fee of £95-00. I told them that I wasn't prepared to pay this as nothing was mentioned when I took out my mortgage. I asked them to send a copy of the original contract which they did, parts of it anyway. Nothing in the paperwork which they have sent mentions anything about paying this exit fee so Iv'e rang them again and they are going to send it again highlighting the relavant parts. They said it was for administration costs of running my mortgage. Is there anyway that I can obtain my deeds without paying this fee ?

tomtontom

When did you take out the mortgage?

edinburgher

I'm confused - I thought that S@ntander sent all customers their deeds anyway to save on the cost of holding them?

grumpy_john

I took the mortgage out about 11 years ago.
They won't release the deeds without the redemption fee.
They did say that they have debited my account with their redemption fee of £ xxx.xx ( whatever that means ) to start the redemption process which now leaves an outatanding balance of £ 95 on my account, which needs paying immediately.

Goldiegirl

This type of exit fee is to cover the costs of redeeming the mortgage, and have been around for some time, and were certainly around 11 years ago.

This would have been mentioned in the terms and conditions booklet that would have accompanied your offer, or sent to you on completion.

Also the lender would send you a leaflet each year, along with your mortgage statement giving details of applicable fees.

There was an issue a few years ago, when lenders increased the exit fees during the term of the mortgage, over and above what was originally was advised. This was deemed to be unfair and was stopped.

£95 seems reasonable for a fee of this type.

To a certain extent, the deeds are unimportant now, as everything is held electronically. So Deeds are no longer needed to confirm ownership of a property. But Deeds are nice to have, as historical documents, especially in older properties.

In order to send you your Deeds, your lender will need to remove their charge on the property. To do this, you need to pay everything that's owed to them - currently the £95.

In answer to your question - no, you can't obtain the Deeds without paying this fee.