To ask help from any lawyers/conveyancers/mortgage people/ anyone cleverer than me one last time?

[theduchessstill]

Sorry - very last thread on this but my solicitor is apparently out of the office today and I would love to know what is going on rather than have a day of anxiety.

I have borrowed an extra £17 500K to buy ex out. I was keeping back £5K of that as part of our settlement to clear marital debts etc. I received £2.5K on Friday - so half the amount I expected. Following advice from an Mumsnetter I asked for a statement of completion which was emailed to me this morning.

It's clear as mud but I can see they have taken about £800 in fees, which is fine but still leaves a shortfall. One thing I have noticed is that on my mortgage offer dated 1/4/17 my current amount owed is said to be approx. £107K but on the completion statement it states the redemption as £109K - so this would explain the missing approx £2K. This is an error, right? My existing mortgage didn't go up £2K between April and now did it? Obviously I have paid all bills and not fallen into arrears. Or am I missing something obvious?

Any advice would be so gratefully received - I am in knots over this today and hate the thought of waiting until tomorrow to sort it.

Is there an early repayment fee?

No - checked that on the paperwork. There was only a small arrangement fee which I paid upfront.

There would have been an early redemption fee, but to avoid it the extra money is in the form of an additional small mortgage, so the original mortgage has not in fact been redeemed. However, on the statement of completion the original mortgage is listed as being redeemed - so maybe this is how the solicitor has done it and that is therefore their error?! FFS.

Phone the bank and query it. When I re did my mortgage (also on divorce) the stupid bank added an extra few thousand. When I queried it there was lots of apologising and falling over themselves. I assumed an honest mistake...now I'm wondering if it's a 'thing'. Which bank?

Have you paid a mortgage payment recently that will have overlapped? Lenders prepare the redemption figs a week-ish prior to completion. If, therefore, there is payment after this time, you will have overpaid your mortgage and they will owe you a refund.

This has happened to me every time I remortgage as my renewal date is the 6th of the month and my payment date is 1st of the month.

Your old mortgage provider will owe you a refund, if that was unclear.

Thank you for replies. My mortgage comes out on the 24th, so not recently. Should that one not come out on Thursday then as the paperwork says my first bill will be due on the first of the month after so 1/9/17? So if they take the one on Thursday it will need to be refunded?

This is so complicated.

This is likely a fee for early repayment.

No, Duchess.

If you are due to pay on 24th that won't happen. You have COMPLETED. That means the old mortgage doesn't exist anymore.

The reason ones first mortgage payment for a new agreement is generally larger is to take into account the interest accrued during the 'mismatched' period. You are paying interest for the period FROM completion to the end on the first mortgage period.

It really isn't complicated. It sounds like you haven't had very good service from your solicitor.

Who calculated the original redemption figure? If it was you, I suspect you have deducted the payment due on Thursday and that's where your shortfall is.

Thank you - that does make sense and I have paperwork explaining why the first payment will be bigger which is just as you said, but that's not due until September 1st.

I didn't calculate the redemption figure - I wouldn't know where to begin. I have found it this morning on the offer letter I received from the bank in April. It differs from the one on the statement by £2K. It would make total sense if it were a penalty for early redemption, but it's not as the advisor explained they would do the extra payment separately to avoid that and they are listed separately on the offer - come to an end a couple of years apart and are at different interest rates etc etc.

Your statement is key. You need to find out why there is a £2k difference. Call your old lender and find out why they gave you one figure in April and another for the actual completion. They will always be an estimate because it depends on interest and the payments you make in the lead up to completion but £2k does seem quite a lot.

If you've been paid the actual amount on the statement and the only difference is in the redemption figure that's what you need to get to the bottom of.

On your letter, is the redemption figure based on the date of the letter? If so, your redemption amount would come down so you'd get more.

I'm not a mortgage adviser or conveyance, I'm an accountant who has had a few mortgages but if you want to send me the statements and redemption letter I'm happy to take a look and see if there is anything glaring?

Could it be the mortgage application fee from when you took out your original mortgage ? Lenders sometimes add these into the mortgage. So you could have a situation where they lent you £100,000 to buy the property, but you owe £102,000 because they added on the £2k mortgage fee.

Thank you so much - the more I think about it, the more it does make sense. Yes, the offer letter states that it assumes I would complete on April 1st, so there have been a further 4 payments since then, so I should receive a bit more, not less. I'm on a fixed interest rate so shouldn't be too much guess work with interest rates.

I will give them a call.

I was a layer, in conveyancing, and I am shocked that completion took place without you having sight of the completion statement and mortgage redemption statement first.
It is possible that a mistake has been made, but the completion statement should be set out clearly enough for this to be apparent. So the daily mortgage interest rate should be shown if any extra days interest have been added on.
Can you ring the mortgage company and ask therm to verify their figures?
Otherwise speak to your solicitor tomorrow, or you could ask someone else there to go through it with you.

Well I spoke to the bank and they have confirmed that the amount on my offer letter was correct. The adviser was unable to explain why the amount on the solicitor's letter was different and then we got cut off! I couldn't get back to the same person, but then thought it's looking like a solicitor's error so rang them. I have left a message asking someone to get back to me today. Can't believe this.

It's helping me so much to write things on here even though no one probably cares .
Spoke to the bank again and he says the solicitor has paid them the early redemption fee, even though it wasn't due. It will now be refunded in 7 -10 working days, but is more than the amount outstanding at £3189.61. This is good...but if I get that through it will be more than the total amount I borrowed, so now I'm just confused again, if a little relieved.

I wonder if I have grounds for complaint with the solicitor?

Just email the solicitor saying I am very disappointed to note that you forwarded the early redemption charge to the bank. It was clear from my instructions and the paperwork that my additional borrowing was precisely that - a loan in addition to my previous mortgage.

I have now been put to the inconvenience of having to chase both your firm and the bank and spent considerable time on the telephone. Although the bank is going to be sending me a refund I will not receive this until approximately x days which means I will have been without this money (which was going to be used to clear another debt) for this period of time. I trust therefore you will provide me with a discount on your fees of say £50 to recompense me for the time and interest I have accrued as a result of your error.

Yours pissed off duchess

Also, just to add. Did you give your solicitor authorisation to withhold their fee from your funds? If not then you should complain about that too.

OK, mistakes happen.
But you should have seen the completion statement before completion to check that you agreed the payments the solicitor was proposing to make. There are often errors/unexpected figures in completion statements, and had this been flagged up to you earlier, it could have been corrected before the payment was sent.
Because of this (rookie) error, you've had not only inconvenience, wasted time etc, but extra interest to pay on the debt you were planning to clear ( ie a tangible loss). Possibly also an extra bank transfer fee? I imagine these would add up to around £50 before account is taken of the inconvenience etc. You should be re-imbursed for any actual loss as well as compensated for your wasted time - someone else at the solicitor's office should/could have looked into this if your own solicitor was away.

Did you get it sorted OP?