Santander £350 mortgage exit charge.

Scorsagian1

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone had experience of Santander's additional £350 mortgage  exit charge they added when they took over Abbey National mortgages? 
I phoned Santander trying to pay a small outstanding lump sum off but the chap in the relevant department said this fee still stands. He said something about waiving another fee and me using Santander to close the mortgage instead using my own solicitor. Which I wasn't even aware I needed a solicitor to do this.

Thanks in advance for any light anyone can throw on this, especially if their abbey national mortgage was also taken over by Santander.

martinbainbridge1975

is it something to do with the deeds of the house why santander want you to use them

Hoenir

Lenders use a solicitor to remove the legal charge (i.e. the mortgage)  they hold over the property to secure the debt once it's repaid. Standard practice for decades. This cost is passed to the mortgage holder. 

£350 is high in relative terms. Probably used as a stick to encourage mortgage holders to move their mortgages away from "Abbey National" to themselves. Legacy runoff's progressively becoming more expensive to administer. 

Scorsagian1

I don't think it was to do with the deeds as I told the santander chap they had already sent me the deeds. I think he was saying it would be free to use santander solicitor and he was saying it to appease me.

Scorsagian1

santander took over abbey years ago so not sure what the chap meant.

kingstreet

Abbey National mortgages had a final redemption fee of £225 for years before Santander took over. This was continued and if you have taken a new product at any time since taking out your original mortgage, the new product is likely to have had this fee included.

I've never come across £350 though. I would ask for written justification as there was no fee charged just because of the Santander purchase of Abbey National.

Scorsagian1

Thanks for all your input folks. i'll try to clarify these charges with Santander again.

dunstonh

The FOS position on mortgage redemption charges is that you should be charged what you were told they were on the last mortgage deal you bought with that lender.    

So, if you did a product transfer (or multiple product transfers) over the years, the terms would be the last product transfer you bought.  Not the first one.