Requesting a redemption statement from Mortgage Express
Three stages, and the risk is concentrated in the middle one: obtaining the Mortgage Express figure, reading it properly, and getting the charge off the register afterwards.
- Minimum notice
- 5 working days
- Handbook reference
- Part 2 · 17.2.1a/b
- Mortgage Express Part 2 last changed
- 2026
- Years with a change
- 4 of the 10 to 2026
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
Part 2 of the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook is amended by lenders without notice. Check the current version before relying on any requirement described here.
Before you ask Mortgage Express for a redemption figure
This page describes a redemption statement as a process. It deliberately stops short of reproducing any lender's own answer, because Part 2 is amended without notice and a stale copy on a page someone acts on is worse than no copy at all.
Three things decide whether a request comes back first time: enough notice, a clear statement of your authority, and a complete list of accounts. Give Mortgage Express all three in the same letter.
The date you expect to redeem
Quote it explicitly. The figure is calculated to a date, and a statement raised to the wrong one is a statement you have to ask for again.
Who you act for
State that you are retained by the borrower, or that you hold their written authority. A lender that cannot tell which applies is entitled to decline.
Every account or roll number
Take them from the official copies and from the client, not from one or the other. Where Mortgage Express holds several loans on one charge, a figure covering some of them does not clear it.
How you intend to pay
Say so, and label the payment so it can be allocated on arrival. A cheque should be payable to Mortgage Express and carry the account number and the borrower's name; a transfer should carry the account number, your firm name and your address.
Room for the date to move
Five working days is the minimum notice, and a completion date that moves is the ordinary case rather than the exception. Asking with room to ask again is cheaper than asking twice in a hurry.
Four checks on a Mortgage Express redemption statement
An undertaking to discharge is a personal obligation, and it is given against what the Mortgage Express statement says rather than against what it was assumed to say. Read it for these four things before you give one.
Does it match the charge you are redeeming
Read the account reference on the statement against the charge on the official copies rather than against your file note. A borrower can hold more than one secured account with Mortgage Express, and the two look alike on a letter.
Does it cover everything that charge secures
A single charge can stand behind several advances, including further lending taken years later. A figure that clears one advance leaves the charge on the register, and the loans it does not cover are the ones nobody mentioned.
What has it assumed about the final month
Mid-month redemptions are treated differently by different lenders: some take the whole month, some exclude payments falling after the redemption date. Where the statement does not say, get the assumption in writing before you tell the client anything about the direct debit.
Are the charges itemised, and does the client recognise them
Early repayment and final repayment charges belong on the face of the statement. Send the client a copy so they can confirm every loan they meant to redeem is on it, and send your completion statement in time for the payment to be authorised.
Discharging the Mortgage Express charge, and registering it
The part of this that carries risk is priority rather than paperwork. A buyer's solicitor has a priority period, and a discharge that arrives after it has run leaves an application to be lodged against a register that has moved on. That is why the 1985 guidance from the Building Societies Association and the Law Society is still cited: seven days for the receipted mortgage or Form DS1, and notice of any likely delay so the application can be lodged in time.
Which route applies decides how long you are waiting. An electronic discharge reaches HM Land Registry from the lender's own system and the entries are usually cancelled on receipt, but it covers a discharge of whole only. An e-DS1 is submitted by the lender after it has the correct payment, and it is normally flagged on the redemption statement itself. A paper DS1 comes back to you.
Part 2 of the Handbook holds both answers for Mortgage Express: where the discharge and the repayment remittance are to be sent, and whether the lender deals with HM Land Registry directly. Read the current version rather than the one you remember, and send the discharge with the remittance on completion day rather than behind it.
Not a rhetorical instruction: Mortgage Express has changed its Part 2 in 4 of the 10 years to 2026, most recently in 2026. Counted from the Lexsure Part 2 change record, which holds the years a Part 2 was amended rather than what any amendment said. Part 2 is amended without notice, so the version to read is the current one whichever way that count goes.
Mortgage Express redemptions: questions conveyancers ask
Is your firm listed where borrowers are looking?
Panel membership decides whether you can act at all. LenderPanel maintains the directory borrowers search when they are choosing a conveyancer, including for Mortgage Express.