You may be looking to remortgage your house for a variety of reasons – to reduce the monthly mortgage payments, to pay off a mortgage earlier, to raise money for home improvements, or to consolidate other more expensive short term debts.
Whatever the reason, our experienced team will work hard to make the process as stress-free as possible for you.
Remortgaging your house is a pretty straightforward process. Unlike with buying or selling a house, we don’t have to tie completion in with any third parties, and most of the information we need will be from you and things can move at a quicker pace.
However, just like a house purchase, we will also be acting for your new mortgage lender. They won’t be familiar with your house, so we need to carry out the same investigations of the title to your house as when you bought it.
This is what we will do for you
- Obtain an up to date copy of your legal title from the Land Registry and ask you some questions about your house. These will be similar to those that a buyer’s solicitor would ask. We’ll advise you of any obvious issues before doing anything else.
- Obtain searches.
- Review the search results when they arrive.
- This may involve looking into issues such as whether planning consents have been obtained, whether obligations binding the house have been complied with and whether there have been any disputes.
- Obtain and review your mortgage offer. We will advise you about it and ensure that the house meets the requirements of your Lender.
- Once you are happy to proceed we will advise you upon the terms of the mortgage and arrange for you to sign the mortgage deed.
- If any adults live at the house who are not legal owners they will need to sign an occupiers consent to the mortgage and will probably need to take independent advice on this.
- We will need to obtain a redemption statement from any current lenders which will tell us the amount required to redeem your existing mortgage or mortgages.
- We will then prepare for completion including preparing a completion statement showing the payments to be made on your behalf and the amount required from you. We will also undertake final searches to make sure that the title to the house has not changed since details were provided at the outset and also to protect the Lender’s position until the new mortgage is registered.
- To prepare for completion we will also provide a certificate to your mortgage lender confirming that we are satisfied with the title to your house and requesting the mortgage funds in readiness for completion.
- To complete we will pay off the old mortgage, complete the new mortgage deed and send any balance of the new mortgage funds to you.
- After completion, we will apply to the Land Registry to discharge the old mortgage and to register the new mortgage against your house. Once registration is complete we will let you and your new lender have an up to date copy of the register for your records.
How long will all that take?
It varies: but probably 4-6 weeks. The timescale depends on receiving your mortgage offer and your local search. We cannot start work until we have the mortgage offer. At the current time the registration of the mortgage at the Land Registry is likely to take at least three months to complete due to backlogs of work at the Land Registry, and this could be substantially longer for unusual or complex transactions. However, this does not affect your new mortgage and happens after completion has taken place.
There are things you can do to help us help you:
- Return all papers promptly
- Pay any monies on account promptly.
- Ensure that you deal with any queries raised by your new lender as soon as possible
- Provide us with details of your current lender at the outset.
How much will it cost?
Our prices cover the work we will do for you to complete the remortgaging of your house.
The price example below is for the remortgage of a house valued at £240,000.
If you are borrowing more or less, or on a leasehold property, legal fees will differ and we will be happy to give you an accurate tailored estimate. This will be between £1,250 and £1,900 plus VAT at 20% in each case and based on the hourly rate of the fee earner (David Stapleton £295 or Caroline Pearson £400 both plus VAT at 20%). The tailored estimate will take into account such factors as:
- The value of the mortgage you are taking out
- The location of the property
- Whether or not the property is tenanted when you re-mortgage
- The title is not registered at the Land Registry yet
- Taking a mortgage with a non-high street lender, using bridging finance or having multiple mortgages
- Issues with the title such as lack of right of way or breach of covenants
- Transactions involving a high-risk jurisdiction
- Involvement of a trust, estate, deputyship or power of attorney
- Re-mortgage by a company
- Other complex or unusual ownership structures.
It is assumed in the example price that none of these complicating factors are present.
We pride ourselves on the fact that if you ask us to work for you, a member of our team, who is one of our qualified solicitors or legal executives will hold your hand throughout the process.
All our team are experienced in helping people like you remortgage and will be able to guide you through the process step by step and answer any queries you may have. You can click here to meet members of our conveyancing team.
The prices below presume that the property being remortgaged is comprised of a single freehold registered title with access from a public highway. This is the case for the majority of houses, but in the minority of houses where this is not the case, more work will be needed and we will need to increase our prices.
Often, we will not know whether any of our assumptions don’t apply until we receive the information on the property from you. We do check these points as soon as we have this, and would then reassess the position with you before doing anything else.
| Estimated cost | VAT @ 20% | Total cost | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal fee | £1,250 | £250 | £1,500 |
| Electronic Money Transfer * | £35 | £7 | £42 |
* There are likely to be two charges one for redeeming your old mortgage and one for paying any balance to you.
Other third party costs
In addition to the fees you will pay us, you will need to pay fees and charges to others which we will make on your behalf. These are pretty standard payments and should be broadly the same whichever law firm you choose to instruct. These are often referred to as ‘disbursements’.
| Fee | Estimated cost | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Search fees | £400 including VAT | This is an approximate figure based on doing a local search, drainage search, coal mining search, environmental search and a chancel search. The figure will vary depending on where your house is located. Local search fees vary greatly and not all searches are always required. In particular, a coal mining search is only required if the house is in a former mining area. In some areas, additional searches are required – for example in Cornwall a tin mining search would be required. |
| HM Land Registry fee | £45 (based on the house value) | HM Land Registry fees are calculated on a sliding scale depending on the value of the house. There is no VAT payable on this fee. The Land Registry fee will be higher if the title to your house is not registered as an application for first registration will be required. The Land Registry have an online calculator which can be accessed here. |
| Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) | £0 | There is no Stamp Duty Land Tax payable on a Remortgage. |
Finally sometimes if a problem is identified with a house it may be possible to deal with this by getting insurance which involves paying a one-off premium. In such cases, you may also incur an insurance premium (the price varies depending on the value of the house and the nature of the problem). We may have to charge more for arranging a policy like this and there will also be a premium.
Total price
The estimated total for the remortgage of a house based on the above information would be £1,945. This price includes all VAT and payments made to third parties and assuming the mortgage funds are paid out by two separate payments.
VAT – Please note that the addition of vat to our charges is governed by very complex statutory provisions and extra-statutory guidance. Read more here.
What happens next?
We would love to work with you and help you through the Remortgaging process.
If you would like a personalised quote, please contact a member of our team directly or complete the contact form and a member of our team will be in touch.