Legalities of redeeming mortgage?

hogweed

Hello all – one of the (few) benefits of aging is that you (hopefully) get to pay your mortgage off, and my friend is now in that happy position.

However, Santander have told her that she’ll need to employ a solicitor for this – news to me, I can’t remember having to do this when I paid mine off (I’m older, so lost in the mists of time).

Is this really necessary? If so, is there likely to be much cost involved?

Thanks

PS it may or may not be relevant that we’re in N Ireland…

MWT

It seems to vary between lenders, some will want the borrower to instruct a solicitor to deal with removing the charge, others will do it themselves but will charge a fee.

tab99uk

Halifax removed charge on my property for free.

MWT

tab99uk said:

Halifax removed charge on my property for free.

Barclays did the same with mine, but that was a few years ago, and I never like to assume that these things wouldn't be different for more recent mortgages.

Either way, someone has to do the work and some lenders will expect the borrower to to pay for it.

This should be set out in the original mortgage documents but it isn't something many people were paying attention to at the time...

hogweed

I managed with some difficulty to find some information on an NI government (what a joke that term is at the moment) site, and it appears that - as with most things - it's more complicated here, with two different land registries etc.

OK so we need a solicitor, but there doesn't seem to be a vast amount of work involved, so hopefully it won't be too expensive...

chanz4

england you can just send of the form yourself

Ganga

When we payed our,s off we just had to pay the final lump sum ( we payed it off early ) but HSBC still managed to loose the deeds! on checking thru this forum it seems that they are not needed these days as long as the land registry know who owns the property.

user1977

Just to clarify, there's no legal involvement in redeeming the mortgage (i.e. paying the balance to the lender and them closing the account).

It's discharging the mortgage registered over the property which needs legal input. That can be left until the next time something happens with the property (i.e. a sale or remortgage) - which might cut down the legal costs a bit. But with the disadvantage that by then, there could be a delay while the lender tracks down a long-closed account.

You don't need to employ a solicitor, if you know what you're doing. Possibly not worthwhile learning though.