Santander Mortgage Applicants Have One More Month to Complete Purchases

Santander will extend its mortgage offers by one month as it processes a “high volume of applications.”

Mortgage offers from the lender typically last six months. Temporarily, they will last seven months, giving borrowers more time to complete home purchases.

While remortgagers can complete the process quickly, those home movers can face months’ waits for sales to be completed, particularly if they’re in a chain. 

If they haven’t completed by the expiry date of the mortgage, they have to return to the lender and apply for a new mortgage. With interest rates rising quickly, that could mean paying significantly more.

That looming threat of higher interest rates is causing a scramble for mortgage deals, with both homeowners and home buyers rushing to lock in deals. 

Santander says this high volume of applicants means it’s taking longer to make mortgage offers. As of this week, the lender is taking an average of 11 days to offer applicants residential mortgages and 14 days to offer buy-to-let mortgages.

Those offers will now be valid for seven months for both purchase and remortgage customers, including those who used mortgage brokers as well as those who applied directly to the bank.

A spokesperson for the Spanish-owned bank said: “Due to continued high demand in the mortgage market and to allow more time for transactions to complete we’re temporarily extending mortgage offers by one month for purchase and remortgage customers.”

“This will help ensure that customers are able to complete on their mortgage at the original rate. The offer extension is automatic so there is no requirement to apply for it or contact us.”

The purchases must be completed by 31 January 2023 and will require “satisfactory valuation” of the properties.

The extension excludes loans offered under the government’s mortgage guarantee scheme.

Under the scheme launched in April 2021, the government guarantees the portion of a 95% loan-to-value (LTV) mortgage above 80%, agreeing to partly compensate the lender if the buyer defaults. The scheme, which has underperformed, closes at the end of the year. Santander says purchases using its guaranteed mortgage products must complete by 30 November, therefore the offer extension will not apply to those loans.

Sources