Gardner Leader

Equity Release / Lifetime mortgages

An Equity Release or Lifetime Mortgage describes the type of mortgage product whereby you borrow a sum of money that is secured against your property, but instead of making monthly repayments as with most mortgages, the size of the loan gradually increases over the years. 

It is a product that is generally offered only to older people (most companies have a minimum age) who have a valuable mortgage-free property so that they can release some money to spend. 

Many of the legal procedures are similar to a standard re-mortgage.

Once we receive the mortgage offer we will read it through and determine what steps are needed in order satisfy the mortgage company conditions. We will then contact you and invite you to a meeting, so that you can provide the information we need and so that we can go through the offer in detail with you.  

For this type of product we will always have a face-to-face meeting with you. This is because the terms and conditions of this type of mortgage will be more restrictive than a normal mortgage and we want to make sure that you understand the terms and have an opportunity to ask questions of us. For example, you will often find that you will need your mortgage company's permission to have someone stay with you for more than a month, or to leave your property empty for more than six weeks. The reason for this is that because you are not making any repayments, the size of the loan only increases and will only be paid off by the value in the property. As a result, the mortgage company will want a higher degree of control over the property than is usually required.

After we have met and you have supplied and signed all of the documents, we will supply everything to the mortgage company. We will then prepare a financial statement for you and arrange a completion date for when you will be given the funds.

Once the loan has completed, we will then arrange for the Land Registry to amend your title deeds to reflect the details of your new lender.

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