Porting your mortgage when you move

Porting moves your mortgage product to a new property. It does not move the loan automatically. The lender treats the move as a fresh application: full affordability assessment on your current income and commitments, a valuation on the new property, and a credit check. "Portable" in the product terms means the lender will consider it, not that they will say yes.

The early repayment charge maths

An early repayment charge (ERC) is the penalty for leaving a fixed or discounted deal before it ends, typically 1% to 5% of the balance depending on how far through the deal you are. On a £250,000 balance with a 3% ERC, breaking the deal costs £7,500. Porting the product to the new property, with sale and purchase completing together, typically avoids that charge entirely. That is the headline reason porting exists.

Porting with a top-up

Most movers need to borrow more, not the same. The ported amount stays on your existing rate. The extra borrowing goes on a new product from the same lender at current pricing. You end up with two sub-accounts, often with different end dates. We push to align the end dates where the lender range allows it, otherwise you face a future where one part of the mortgage is free to move and the other is locked, which weakens every future remortgage.

When sale and purchase do not complete on the same day

Many lenders allow a gap between redeeming the old mortgage and completing the new one. The common mechanic is that you pay the ERC at redemption and reclaim it if the ported purchase completes within a set window, commonly 30 days to six months depending on the lender. Criteria vary widely here and the refund is not automatic, so we confirm the window in writing before the chain commits to dates.

When porting is the wrong call

If your existing rate is higher than what the wider market offers today, porting preserves a deal not worth preserving. If the new property type sits outside your lender criteria, the port fails regardless of your finances. And occasionally a new lender deal beats the ported rate by enough to justify paying the ERC. We run all three checks on every case.

Common pitfalls we see

Assuming porting is automatic and finding out at full application that income changes since the original loan sink the affordability test. Borrowing less on the new property and getting hit with a partial ERC on the slice repaid. Agreeing completion dates before the lender confirms the porting window. Each of these is avoidable with a phone call made early enough.