Mortgage Exit Fee

So you have phoned your lender or sent them one of our template letters to reclaim your mortgage exit fees but so far they aren’t coming to the party in terms of repaying your hard earned cash. What to do now?

The next step is to write a second (or if you originally called the lender your first) letter. This letter is called a “letter before action” as it is sent prior to court action being taken against the other party. A proforma of the letter to send is as follows:

Dear (Insert name)

Account no: (write your mortgage account number here)

It is disappointing to note that you have refused to refund the mortgage exit fee charges which were levied on my account, despite the fact that they are they unlawful under common law, under statute and under recent consumer regulations. The full list of the charges I am claiming are attached to this letter as an appendix.

I require full repayment of these charges and will begin a claim against you for the full amount, plus my associated costs if you do not comply with my request within 14 days. Please not that this claim will commence without any further notice to you.

Yours sincerely

(your name)

The appendix should be headed up “Schedule of charges” and should list out each exit charge being claimed. The list should clearly have a total at the bottom of it.

This letter should hopefully elicit a response from the mortgage lender, if at this stage they are still refusing to pay then the alternative is to either complain to the financial ombudsman service. This is a free service and they could require the lender to repay all or part of the mortgage exit fee charged. The alternative, which we will cover in a our next post, is to go to the small claims court. Don’t worry this isn’t anywhere near as frighening as it sounds