Offer on a house from someone who is planning to port their mortgage

[TumbleLeaf21]

We are having tough time selling our house, with chain collapsing three times now 😵‍💫. 1st sale people further down the chain pulled out. 2nd was a split chain, was taking 5 months and chain collapsed, 3rd the buyer of our buyer pulled out days before exchange.. We have just received an offer from someone who is planning to port their mortgage. I understand they haven’t actually got their mortgage offer in place as in order to port they have to apply for a specific purchase, complete the forms with our address on it. With that in mind and considering the time we have already invested into this, we don’t want to enter another slow moving sale with additional risks attached and also are reluctant to take it off the market until they actually have funding in place. Please, does anyone have experience of accepting from someone who is planning on porting a mortgage?

We ported our mortgage when we moved to this house. It is just taking their current mortgage on the current existing terms and possibly borrowing more to afford the more expensive house. We did have to apply and were affordability checked to ensure we could afford the extra payments. I don't see this being any different to someone else buying your house with a mortgage, be it first time buyer or porting; both will need to apply to the bank.

Porting a mortgage is much simpler and quicker than applying for a new one IME. We did it, it worked like a dream. What are you concerned about exactly?

Surely everyone applying for a mortgage ultimately has to apply for it against the specific address - what's your concern?

It’s just like a mortgage application but with the rate already fixed. The main thing to ask is whether they have a buyer for their house.

Edited to add: you would need to take it off the market as you would with any other buyer using a mortgage.

Thanks for your replies, in all honesty we are just concerned because it’s not a process we were overly familiar with - I suppose we are assuming that whilst they are proposing they port their mortgage, won’t it take a while to get an affordability confirmation where as if you go straight in with a new mortgage we would assume that a mortgage in principle would have generally been done as an affordability check first? We’ve gone through a lot of disappointment and frustration with selling this house, we just want to make sure we’re not about to fall down again because we don’t know what to expect or risk it taking months and months again.

Everyone applying for a mortgage has to do so for a specific house. They can get an agreement in principle with the lender (like everyone else) which just says in theory we’re happy to lend them x amount. Then when they apply for a mortgage the proper checks etc happen and you have to put down which house you’re buying. When you port a mortgage you just take your deal with you, so rather than choosing a new mortgage product you keep the product you’re on. If you want to borrow more money then that might be on a new product but ultimately none of this affects you/slows down the sale. Their offer is no more iffy than anyone else who tries to buy with a mortgage. Indeed it might be more straightforward as they already know their lender etc. If they can’t produce an agreement in principle I would ask why, as porting a mortgage is no reason why they couldn’t.

I think almost everyone who already owns a house with a mortgage (I.e. anyone not a FTB or cash buyer) will be porting part of their mortgage - especially at the moment when their existing mortgage is likely to be on a much better rate than any new lending. It really is exactly the same as taking out a new mortgage in terms of what it means for you.

Agreement in Principle doesn't, so far as I'm aware, incorporate the kind of detailed affordability check that forms part of a full mortgage application. It's more just a general 'sure, based on your answers to the questions we've asked, you can probably borrow about this much'.

I don’t think it’s anything to worry about over any other buyer getting a mortgage @TumbleLeaf21

We got an agreement in principle when we ported, to be fair, but I wouldn’t insist on one.

We ported, and it was easier than a full mortgage application in many ways. I wouldn't sweat it tbh!

I've ported my mortgage 3 times when buying! It was easy and actually had a far better idea how much we could additionally borrow, as the bank were way more candid over the phone with us.

We got an AIP when we were porting as we were going to borrow more on top of our existing mortgage but this is going back to the post Covid house buying madness when we were competing with lots of other buyers but I don't think many people bother with AIPs for porting.

We’ve just applied to port our mortgage for our onward purchase, we got an agreement in principle to check what we could go up to and then as soon as the sale’s memorandum was issued our broker submitted the application. Less than a day later they’ve scheduled the mortgage valuation, it’s really straightforward as we already have a loan with the bank and they just ran affordability for the extra we’re borrowing

Thanks a lot everyone! It helps to put our minds at rest.. 4th time got to be lucky! 🍀🤔

We ported last year. Like people have said we did it to keep a good interest rate. It obviously means that you only have one lender to approach. We did have a decision in principle like others due to extra borrowing. Which is definitely not anywhere near the original rate. So I would check whether your property is more or less than the current one. If it's more I'd ask them to get a decision in principle. It was super straightforward for us. We ported my old deal, borrowed extra and added my wife. They asked for much less paperwork than when I originally borrowed the money as I banked with them and theu could see me paying the mortgage