Early Repayment Charge when breaking chain

wazza07

Apologises if this is a stupid question. So our house purchase has collapsed so we’re going into rented to secure the price we got for our house (agreed pre-Covid). It also puts us in a better/easier position when properties do come up. 

Our mortgage with Santander (which can be ported) has an ERC of approx £3800. I’m aware that if you don’t sell/buy on the same day, Santander will refund your ERC if you complete on your new property within 3 months (6 months for a new build). These terms have been extended due to COVID-19 as well.

Now here’s the question, would we require to have the mortgage offer for our next home home before we complete on our sale in order for them to port the mortgage and refund the ERC? So we’re hoping to complete on our sale towards the end of this month. For instance, if we found somewhere to buy in a week or two and got our mortgage offer we would be able to get the ERC refund if we completed within the timescales. But what if we found a property after we had completed on our sale? Would we still be able to port our mortgage (as surely it technically doesn’t exist anymore) and claim the refund on the ERC?

davidmcn

I doubt the date of the mortgage offer matters at all, it's just the period between redemption of the old mortgage and drawdown of the new one which matters.