Re-mortgage on Leasehold Property

• There may be varying reasons as to why you are re-mortgaging your house. It may be to free up equity for an extension or to settle a legal charge on the property or secure a better interest rate on your mortgage.
• Proof of identity will be requested from you and we will supply you with an initial letter of engagement for our services. We will also ask you for your current mortgage account number.
• We will then write to the current mortgage lender and request that they forward any title deeds along with an initial redemption statement.
• We will obtain an official copy of the property title from the Land Registry.
• Once the title information has been received this will then be checked by us as this provides legal information with regard to the property as well as a plan of the subject property/land.
• Depending on the lender, searches may or may not be required for a re-mortgage. We will check the specific lenders criteria and submit any necessary searches. It may be possible in the alternative to obtain indemnity search insurance and we will advise you of this.
• If the lease requires we will need to gain your landlord’s formal consent to register the charge against the property. There will be an administrative fee for dealing with this document and may be additional legal fees if the landlord involves their appointed solicitors.
• Your lender should issue the mortgage offer, a copy of which should be sent to us. We will check the terms of the offer to ensure that the value of the property is correct and that the conditions of the offer are met. We will report to you on the terms of the mortgage offer explaining how much you are borrowing, interest rates, monthly payments and any special conditions.
• We will then arrange for you to sign the new mortgage deed.
• We will request a final redemption statement from your lender to repay your existing mortgage.
• Prior to completion we will carry out a bankruptcy search against each borrower to ensure that you are not bankrupt. We will also carry out a Land Registry priority search to ascertain whether any interests have been registered against the title since we obtained a copy of your title at the outset.
• Once the completion date has been agreed we will request the mortgage funds from the lenders, most of whom require an average of five working days’ notice.
• On the day of completion we will receive the new mortgage funds from your lender and we will then redeem your existing mortgage.
• After completion we will deal with registration of the new mortgage with the Land Registry and supply you with a copy of the new title.

The matter should normally take between 4-8 weeks. However this may vary depending on if your lender requires property searches to be carried out and if your freeholder needs to consent to your lender’s charge being registered against the Property.

• If the consent to charge is required from the freeholder
• A lease may require that the mortgage of the flat cannot take place without the prior written consent of the landlord. This document is called a licence to charge
• Compliance with restrictions on the property title
• If the mortgage is not a “first mortgage” on the property
• If a deed of priority or any ancillary documents are required to the main transaction
• Unforeseen complications arising
• If documents requested from the client have not been provided and we are chasing for these