Can I take my mortgage deal with me when I move house?

Full answer

Porting a mortgage means transferring your existing mortgage deal, including its interest rate and remaining term, from your current property onto a new one when you move house, rather than repaying your existing deal and taking out a completely new mortgage. Most fixed-rate and tracker mortgage deals in the UK include a porting option, and this is one of the main reasons porting matters financially: repaying a fixed-rate mortgage before the end of its agreed term normally triggers an Early Repayment Charge (ERC), often a percentage of the outstanding balance that can run into thousands of pounds, but porting the same deal onto a new property, completed at the same time as selling the old one, generally avoids this charge entirely. However, porting is not automatic or guaranteed -- you must still make a fresh mortgage application to your existing lender for the new property, and you will be reassessed against their current affordability criteria and income verification requirements, which can mean being refused even though you already have the mortgage, particularly if your income, credit history or the lender's lending policy has changed since you first took out the deal. If you need to borrow more to fund the new, likely more expensive, property, the extra amount you borrow is usually arranged as a separate additional loan on the lender's current rates, not the original ported rate, effectively giving you two mortgage parts running alongside each other. Timing also matters: most lenders require the sale of the old property and purchase of the new one to complete simultaneously or within a short window for porting to apply.

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