Desperately seeking remortgage advice after after passing of mother

silvercar

Looking at Coventry's current mortgage offers, they only have one product that is fee free at the moment. I assume that is the one you are going for, given that you haven't mentioned a fee. It includes a remortgage service (details here) and also a £500 cashback on completion - that should help with the costs.

zn09

silvercar wrote: »

Firstly sorry for your loss and sorry that you seem to be bearing the burden of all this on your own.



Deeds to a property are registered with the Land Registry. (Unless the property has not changed hands or been remortgage for over 30 years, in which case it may not be registered.) The Land Registry is a company that holds the deeds (ownership records).

Everything is now held digitally by Land Registry, as opposed to holding physical deeds.



Land Registry will answer the question you asked.

What you are doing here is transferring ownership of the equity and taking out a new mortgage at the same time. You need to do the Assent and the remortgage at the same time.

Clearly there is legal work to be done and (if the lender doesn't offer a deal that pays your legal fees) then that needs paying for.
MAB will get some commission from the lender. They have also charged you a fee. I assume this was explained at the outset.

For their money they have found you a mortgage. Possibly you could have found that for yourself, depending on your abilities, and saved yourself £300.

Thank you for your reply. Is it not possible then to save lots of money by doing the assent myself for £40 (which at this point, I'm assuming transfers the deeds and equity into my name) and then using the lender's solicitor free of charge to do the remortgage?

This is where I'm confused as it seems I may not need my own solicitor.

silvercar wrote: »

Looking at Coventry's current mortgage offers, they only have one product that is fee free at the moment. I assume that is the one you are going for, given that you haven't mentioned a fee. It includes a remortgage service (details ]here and also a £500 cashback on completion - that should help with the costs.

Thank you for your reply. I haven't been told anything about cash back and seeing as I'm going through the MAB I don't think I'll be eligible for it anyway.

minimike2

Please don't take this the wrong way, but with your level of understanding being demonstrated (by your own admission you are confused), do you really want to take on board work which is extremely important to get right just to save what in the big picture is an insignificant amount of money?

It's a hard enough time for you without having to cope with things if they go wrong.

haras_nosirrah

Do not even attempt to save yourself a few hundred pounds on this. If you get this wrong it will cost you a lot more money to sort it out then you could potentially save and will come back to bite you very very hard. You could come to sell it in the future and find you have mucked something up and made it unsellable

Part of your solicitors cost is related to ensuring that if they get it wrong you have come back - diy it and get it wrong and it will be long, complicated and expensive to sort it out.

If you want to sort your own solicitor then ring around and get some quotes but don't even attempt to diy this

scar1_2

Hi - I purchased a house earlier this year, was reasonably straightforward for my solicitor and there were lots of elements I would have missed if I had attempted to do this myself (even if this was possible).

I echo the advice above, get the experts to take the stress away from you and get it done properly. Mitigate the worry of paying commission by calling solicitors yourself explain the situation and ask them to pickup your case.

I chose a high street solicitor that I could go and see in person and not wait for correspondence by email, phone or mail. I trusted them and any questions I had, however simple she was able to answer and clarify.

House sale went without a hitch, I did not have to worry about anything other than moving. This was important for me.

Hope everything goes well for you and this situation does not stress you too much.

scar1

silvercar

Thank you for your reply. Is it not possible then to save lots of money by doing the assent myself for £40 (which at this point, I'm assuming transfers the deeds and equity into my name) and then using the lender's solicitor free of charge to do the remortgage?

This is where I'm confused as it seems I may not need my own solicitor.

I'm not sure you can "do the assent youself" and leave the current mortgage in the name of your mother. If there was no mortgage then you could, but this complicates it.

Personally I would be checking out whether MAB are pocketing the £500 cashback as well as charging you a £300 fee. The fee is acceptable if disclosed at the outset, what in my mind wouldn't be acceptable is if they were also keeping cashback that should be yours.

As far as solicitors go, if you used the lender's solicitors you would have some extras to pay for as your's is not a simple remortgage, but may not be as high as sourcing a lender yourself. I hope you are getting the free valuation that Coventry offer.

getmore4less

As you already own the house(you have the beneficial interest) you just need the legal title changing and a mortgage in your name

The new lenders solicitor should be able to do the transfer for you as part of their work changing the mortgage over(for an extra fee).

I can't see any reason you need a separate solicitor.

The house is still with the existing lender (Brittania/CoOp) who have made an exception to allow me to remain living in the property with the mortgage still in her name and me paying the monthly payments, but now its time for me to sort out a new mortgage and pay them off.

Had you asked if Brittania/coop would have given you a mortgage?
Had they started to encourage you to take over the mortgage.

what rate were you paying and what rate have you got now?

zn09

Thanks for the replies and yes, a lot of the information I'm receiving is hard to understand unless you're specifically trained. Also its a shame I'm getting conflicting information from different sources.

I've just received this reply from Coventry's solicitor

"Good Morning,

Your solicitor needs to update your Title Deeds from (mother's) name to yours, showing you are the owner of the above property. Once the title Deeds have been updated at the Land Registry we will be able to process your Remortgage.
Your Mortgage offer is due to expire on 30th January so it might be in your best interest to ask your solicitor to deal with the remortgage and updating Title Deeds simultaneously as the Land Registry can take a few weeks to update.

I'm going into Brittania on Wednesday to ask if I can do this process myself, given that there is an outstanding mortgage with them. Then I'm going to the Citizen's Advice Bureau on Wednesday, before having a final meeting with my mortgage advisor on Wednesday afternoon.

If anyone else has any more thoughts, don't hesitate to let me know.

Thanks all.

silvercar

The Coventry has suggested you get your solicitor to deal with both issues at the same time. I suggest you take their advice rather than attempt to get the name changed yourself.

I doubt the Brittania will be happy for you to change the name on the deeds while keeping the mortgage in your late Mum's name. If they are happy to transfer the mortgage to you, then you don't need to take out the Coventry mortgage.

Worst case is that you transfer the deeds yourself (if this is possible), then wait for Land Registry to update, by which time your mortgage offer with the Coventry has expired.