How long are the lenders taking to produce mortgage offers?
Some lenders can produce speedy mortgage offers, often in a matter of days, especially when you have a good credit score and their systems categorise you as low risk. Although this really does depend on the lender.
Aaron Strutt, product director at Trinity Financial, says: "HSBC and Halifax are pretty quick, while lenders like Virgin Money, Nationwide and Barclays are struggling. It helps when the bank or building society uses a "desktop" valuation, so a valuer does not need to visit the property."
Lender |
Current service standards |
HSBC for Intermediaries |
The bank is taking four days to assess applications for employed borrowers and six working days for the self-employed. It is taking two days to assess supporting documents and six days to respond to broker messages. |
Santander for Intermediaries |
It is taking nine days on average to produce a mortgage offer for a residential mortgage and twelve for a buy-to-let offer. These figures are likely to get worse over the coming days. |
Virgin for Intermediaries |
The bank is taking an average of eight days to assess an application and to instruct the valuation. It then takes 16 days for document processing. |
Nationwide for Intermediaries
|
The society is extremely busy at the moment taking an average of 24 days to produce a mortgage offer. This rises to 26 days if the initial decision in principle refers for additional checks. |
NatWest for Intermediaries |
NatWest offers 32% of its mortgages within 8 to 14 days and 9% offered within 7 days. It is taking an average of nearly 40 minutes to answer the phone. |
Source: Mortgage lender websites