Changing mortage lender

[steve_smith]

Hi all,

We have a fairly small mortgage on our house, but never the less came to the end of our fixed rate with our current lender (Halifax) and found another lender (Nationwide) who offered a much better (fixed) rate, apparently with no fees.

So we decided to move lender and went in to the Nationwide and filled all the forms. One of the questions they asked was the name of our solicitor. It hadn't even occured to us that they would need to be involved to be honest...

Anyway, the wheels then went in to motion and I got a letter from our solicitor quoting me £350 in legal fees to transfer our mortgage from one lender to another! We already knew that we would be needing to pay the Halifax a £150 admin fee for paying the loan off, but had no idea it would cost this much in legal fees!

So to save ourselves about £20 a month for the next two years is going to cost us a total of £500. It begins to make less and less financial sense, especially if the base rate falls again.

Just wondered whether solicitors fees of this magnitude were the norm for what I would have thought would be a fairly straight forward thing to do?

Cheers,

Steve.

[Kryten]

Sounds about the norm, I think mine were around 300 but were refunded on completion in my deal. Try a few different conveyencers instead maybe?

[steve_smith]

Thanks for the tip on refunding the legal fees, most helpful.

I've just checked the Nationwide website, and it says "Moving your mortgage to Nationwide also results in legal costs. Nationwide will normally pay for these", but then goes on to say that its on the proviso you let them use their own solicitor.

Now we were never offered that option, so I'm waiting for them to call me back and explain :)

If I can save £350, I will!

[Kryten]

Yeah, I had to use the lenders solicitors, but luckily they were very good anyway