Skipton Building Society has lengthened the validity period for several standard mortgage offers, giving borrowers more time for a purchase, remortgage or buy-to-let transaction to complete. Its intermediary update says these offers will now be valid for nine months, compared with six months previously. Additional borrowing offers move from one month to three months.
This is a change to the offer timetable, not a promise that every application will receive a particular product or that a transaction will complete. Skipton says a further three-month extension remains an option for standard mortgage offers where applicable and subject to its existing requirements. Borrowers and brokers should check the offer letter and confirm the rules for their case before relying on an extension.
The lender says its analysis found that most customers who needed a replacement offer because a transaction had overrun completed between six and nine months after applying. That is Skipton’s own analysis; the public update does not give a sample size or methodology, so it should not be treated as an industry-wide measure.
A longer offer window may reduce the chance that a buyer needs a replacement offer solely because legal work or a chain takes longer than expected. It does not remove the need to keep documents current, satisfy the lender’s conditions or stay in contact with the conveyancer and broker. Individual offers can include their own expiry date and conditions. A lender may still need to assess a request against its policy and the borrower’s circumstances.
Skipton says there are no changes to its lending criteria or underwriting standards as part of this update. It also says valuation validity periods are unchanged. The new validity period should therefore be understood as more time before an eligible offer expires, rather than a change to affordability checks, property valuation arrangements or the amount someone can borrow.
Anyone comparing mortgage options should consider the full terms, fees, rate period and circumstances, and should not choose a lender on offer duration alone. Rates and products can change, and an offer’s validity does not guarantee that a buyer will complete by a particular date. Ask the lender or a suitably qualified mortgage adviser to explain how the terms apply to an individual application.
Source: Skipton Building Society for intermediaries, “Mortgage offer validity increased to 9 months”.