Can I Move Home After I Take Out a Lifetime Mortgage?

The great news is that nothing is further from the truth – lifetime mortgages allow you to move home after you’ve taken out a plan, and transfer the mortgage across to it.

This process is called porting, and has been a common feature on lifetime mortgages for some time. Not only that, but in 2025 it was made a product standard by the industry trade body, the Equity Release Council, ensuring it continues to be offered on all new lifetime mortgages.

How does it work?

If you contact us with the new property details we can let you know if it is likely to meet our current lending conditions, and we will also let you know if you need to repay anything towards the mortgage (this normally only happens if the new property is valued at less than your current property).

Please note, we cannot provide guarantees at this point as we would need to fully assess the new property, which would include arranging a survey and the necessary legal checks.

If you still wish to proceed, we will send an application form to complete and return to us. Please note, you will need to pay an upfront fee for us to value the new property - we’ll confirm the fees involved (these are also in our Tariff of Charges).

What happens next?

Once we’ve received these we will:

• Review your application and arrange a valuation on the new property.

• After receiving a satisfactory survey, we will send you and your solicitor a porting mortgage offer. This will detail any partial repayment required and any other special conditions for the port to take place.

Our solicitors will contact your solicitors who are dealing with the purchase of your new property. They will confirm with your solicitors all requirements to agree the transfer of our charge to your new property, and this may involve additional searches and documents. You will need to visit your solicitor to sign and return the offer (and respond to any other requests that your solicitors are unable to resolve themselves).

Once a transfer date has been agreed by all parties (and any required partial repayment has been made), our solicitors will complete the porting of your mortgage.

Once completion is confirmed we will:

• Update the account with the new property details.

• Apply any requested payment to the mortgage.

• Our solicitors will transfer our charge onto your new property, and we will inform the Land Registry to remove our charge on your old property.

Your mortgage will then continue as normal.

What do I need to consider?

It’s worth bearing in mind that although there is no specific timescale, the porting process can take a number of weeks to complete. This is due to the same property assessment and conveyancing procedures needing to take place as with any mortgage for a house purchase.

We have also found that porting the mortgage to a new build estate can take longer due to extra complications and delays in the legal process.