Porting mortgage but completing sale before purchase- possible?

[Howaboutthisone]

We are finding the purchase of our new home by porting our existing mortgage and taking out a further mortgage amount, both through our existing provider. Buyer threatened to pull out so it's looking likely that we'll need to complete our sale before our purchase. Can we do this if we're porting part of the mortgage?! Such a stressful time! Does anyone have any experience of this? We've asked our solicitor but will have to wait to hear back on Monday and thought I'd see if the wisdom of mumsnet could help me out.

Some companies will give you a set amount of time. Who is your existing provider?

We did this a few years back, had a 3 week gap. We had to pay the early settlement fees and then were able to request a refund after the purchase completed. I would speak to your lender to see if it is possible and make sure you get something in writing from them agreeing to such an arrangement -ours did try to wriggle out of the refund but we had it in writing Hope it all goes well

We're getting a new mortgage with our existing provider so not the same situation as you, but we did have to split our sale and purchase to let our buyers move in (they were 8.5months pregnant and we really didn't want to delay them because our sellers were being slow).

We're in holiday cottages until the purchase completes (hopefully only two weeks) and while we were really upset to have to do it, it's now working out to be like a holiday from the moving process so nowhere near as horrible as we thought. It's such a relief to have our house sale sorted. Have you got somewhere to stay?

We have our mortgage with Woolwich. Until a few years ago they would give you 6 months in between and still let you port your mortgage. When I spoke to them a few months ago they said that the rule had changed and you could not have a gap at all. This was not negotiable.
You need to call your mortgage company, not your solicitor.

Thanks for your help with this. Think we'll be staying with family. This is so stressful!

Nationwide are the provider

I found this on their website but it's not hugely clear- to me anyway! I've asked our financial adviser now too. Here's what I found...

We've just done this with Nationwide and were told the sale and purchase had to happen on the same day. They covered this in one of the mortgage arrangement calls. It's worth ringing them to check

That doesn't sound good for us! Financial adviser has been dealing with them for us so far so we're going to ask him to let us know on Monday. I've read and re read the bit I found on the website above and that sounds like you can do separate days. How long ago was yours please?

Sorry just saw that you said you'd just done it!

It was 2 weeks ago but may depend on the product. Fingers crossed

Thank you!

In case anyone finds this in the future and needs the update. We are allowed to do this as we already have their mortgage offer for the house we're buying but we can't make any alterations to the mortgage now before completion if we still want to port.