What's involved in the legal side of a remortgage, and why it's usually simpler and quicker than buying or selling.
Even though you're not buying or selling, moving your mortgage to a new lender means the new lender needs to register a charge against the property, and your existing lender's charge needs to be removed — that's a legal change to the title at HM Land Registry, which is why a conveyancer (rather than just your mortgage broker) has to handle it.
Your conveyancer confirms you own the property outright (or with whoever else is named on the title), checks for anything already registered against it that the new lender needs to know about, and deals with any conditions the new lender attaches to their mortgage offer.
There's no chain, no seller's solicitor to coordinate with, and usually no need for fresh local authority or environmental searches if you already have suitable indemnity or recent search results — which is why remortgage conveyancing typically completes in a matter of weeks rather than the months a purchase can take.
A leasehold property (the new lender may want updated information from the management company), a Help to Buy equity loan that needs redeeming or updating as part of the remortgage, or delays in your existing lender confirming the redemption figure needed to pay off the old mortgage.
Remortgage legal fees are usually lower than a full purchase, since there's less work involved — but they're not free, and firms still vary in what they charge and what disbursements they pass on. An itemised quote makes it easy to compare firms on a like-for-like basis rather than guessing from a single headline number.
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