Residential Conveyancing – Re-Mortgaging

People re-mortgage their properties all the time. Why? There can be a whole host of reasons why you decide to go down this route. The mortgage market is very competitive and you may have spotted a lower rate of interest that can reduce your monthly payments, or you may be borrowing more than your present mortgage to pay for home improvements or a Caribbean holiday. It is often found to be the cheapest method of raising finance. You may also be switching types of mortgage for example from an endowment mortgage to a straight repayment mortgage.

Before you start there are a couple of things to bear in mind:

• Does your current mortgage have an Early Redemption Penalty? If so you need to take this into account when working out the sums involved.
• Financial Advice - make sure you are getting the best deal on your new mortgage. We would recommend you take independent financial advice on this.

Once you are happy on these two points, then the procedure is as follows:

1. We will write to your present lender and ask them for a Mortgage Redemption Statement and the Title Deeds. At the same time we will send off your Local Authority Search, and any other necessary searches. These searches will not apply should you decide to stay with your existing mortgage lender. During this time you should have made an application for a new Mortgage. In most cases you will be asked to supply a reference from your employer, past wage slips and evidence of who you are. This part of the re-mortgage is sorted out between you and your financial adviser or existing/new lender, and we would not normally get involved with this process.
2. Once your new mortgage application has been finalised a Mortgage Offer will be issued. By this time we would hope to have your title deeds and searches as requested in step 1. If we have requested searches then we will advise you and the lender of any problems with the search results. We will also check whether there are any life policies with the deeds.
3. A completion date is arranged for the earliest possible date and the Mortgage Deed sent to you for signature and return. We will also ask your current lender for an updated Mortgage Redemption Statement so we have the exact figure owing to your existing lender. The completion date is usually arranged for the end of each month to assist you in regulating your mortgage payments.
4. Completion day. As soon as we have received the money from your new lender we will send the amount owing to your existing lender to pay off the mortgage. Any balance due to you will be sent to you on that day.
5. We will send the mortgage deed to the Land Registry so that they can amend and update their records. Once they have done this they will send the Title Deeds back to us. We will then send them on to the new lender.