Porting

Helping your clients move their mortgage to a new property

If your client has a residential mortgage with us, things don't have to change when they’re moving home - they can take their current mortgage deal with them and if they need to, top up their borrowing on a new deal from our current range of mortgage products.

Plus we'll pay you a proc fee based on the whole loan amount, not just the top-up borrowing - to reflect the work that you do.

How does it work?

1


Obtain a Mortgage Illustration by using our simple illustration request form.

You’ll need to do this before you can proceed any further with the application.

We’ll aim to email the Mortgage Illustration to you within 24 hours.

2


Once you’ve got the Mortgage Illustration, you're ready to download and complete the Portability application form.

We can't accept hand written applications, however the form is editable so you can fill it in on your computer. For help with this, please read our 'Editable PDFs' guide.


When you've completed the form and you're ready to return it:

Please note email is not a secure form of communication.
3


Once received, we’ll allocate the application to a dedicated underwriter.

Your underwriter will call you to discuss how we can issue a mortgage offer as soon as possible.

They will also give you a direct contact number and email address so they can answer any questions you may have.

Criteria for porting an Accord Mortgage

Prime Borrower - top up not required: The last 3 months mortgage payments must have been made and there must be no more than 2 mortgage payments currently outstanding.

Prime Borrower - top up required: There must be no missed payments within the last 12 months AND no more than 1 missed payment within the last 24 months.

Credit Repair Borrower - top up not required: The last 3 months mortgage payments must have been made and there must be no more than 2 mortgage payments currently outstanding.

Credit Repair Borrower - top up required: 0 missed payments in the last 24 months and would qualify for a Prime top up product subject to the whole application meeting Prime criteria.

Any ERCs must be paid by the customer and these will be refunded if the customer returns to Accord within 6 months of the date of redemption.

Where a mortgage has more than one part, each individual part is subject to its own ERC. Where a product has expired between redemption and completion of the new loan, the customer must choose a product from the current range and the ERC will still be refunded (subject to completion being within 6 months of the original redemption).

If your client is looking to borrow less than their current balance, we’ll charge ERCs on the amount they don’t port to the new mortgage.

In all cases a new valuation will be carried out for all portability applications, regardless of whether a top-up product is required to determine the new loan to value (LTV) of the lending. A non-refundable standard valuation fee is payable for this and needs to be paid upfront.

Top-up products

When borrowing £50,000 or more, top up borrowing can be taken from the current range of house purchase products including those with incentives.

When borrowing less than £50,000, top up borrowing can be taken from the with no incentives or from the range of portability only top-up products dependant on loan size.

Self Cert

If the existing mortgage was self-certified, in order to have a top up product, the customer must provide income verification to cover the total debt. The top up product should be full status. A straight port (same or lower loan size and LTV) is allowed without income verification - subject to payment history.

Full Status

Where the original mortgage is on a full status product, the portability top up amount must also be on a full status basis, with income verification to support the entire loan.

Where the applicant chooses to add the Product Fee to the mortgage at completion, we will not include this in the LTV calculation.

All portability top-ups are subject to product criteria, including minimum loan size, maximum LTV, product fee and credit score.

If any part of your customer’s mortgage is on interest only, they can maintain their interest only status providing a suitable repayment strategy is in place. Acceptable repayment strategies include:

For existing customers who took out an Interest Only mortgages with us prior to January 2018:
  • Existing Endowment
  • General Investments
  • Pension Lump Sum
  • Sell main residence and downsize
  • Overpayments
  • Savings
For existing customers who took out an Interest Only mortgage with us after February 2018:
  • Sale of mortgaged property at the end of the term and downsize
  • Savings
  • Existing Endowment
  • General Investments
  • Pension Lump Sum

Any top up borrowing can be on a capital and interest repayment basis, an interest only basis or part capital and interest, part interest only basis.

Please be aware that different criteria apply for interest only mortgages. Please see our lending criteria for further information.

Porting within 90 days of product maturity

If your customer is looking to port their mortgage and are within 90 days of product maturity there are a couple of options available to them.

  1. They can port their current product and complete a product transfer on maturity, however the product transfer must be carried out once the portability application completes as the two processes cannot be carried out simultaneously. This may result in your customer spending some time on SVR depending on when their product matures and when their portability application completes.

  2. They can opt to take a new business product for the entire loan amount instead of porting the current product. If this option is selected we will waive ERCs.

Accord will pay a procuration fee at 0.30% of the full loan amount whichever of the two options the customer selects.

For both options please follow the standard portability process detailed above.

 

Porting and the Help to Buy Equity Loan Scheme

Should your customer have a mortgage with us where a Help to Buy Equity Loan is outstanding against their property, the customer is able to port their existing mortgage deal providing the Equity Loan is repaid upon sale of their current property and they meet our new lending criteria.

This is subject to the customer meeting our new lending and Help to Buy criteria.

The new Help to Buy Scheme England 2021-2023 is limited to first-time buyers only and therefore it will not be possible to port an existing mortgage to a new property on this scheme. However, Help to Buy products can still be ported to non Help to Buy properties.

Product finder

Search our range of mortgage deals with our easy-to-use product finder tool.

  Product finder