The Mortgage Release Fee

In a typical mortgaged sale, the seller requests a liability letter from the bank stating the settlement figure. The buyer, or the buyer’s bank, settles the seller’s outstanding loan as part of the completion arrangement, the bank issues its release documents, and the mortgage is discharged at the trustee office — either immediately before or in the same sitting as the transfer itself. The release fees above are paid at that point. Where the buyer is also financing, the sequence runs release, transfer, and new mortgage registration in order, which is why mortgaged-to-mortgaged transactions involve the longest trustee appointments.

Sellers should also budget for the bank’s own early-settlement charges, which are set by the lender under Central Bank rules and are separate from the DLD schedule, and for the developer’s No Objection Certificate, which cannot usually be issued until service charges are cleared. The buyer’s side of a mortgaged sale — the 4% and the registration of the new loan — is unaffected by the seller’s release costs; the calculator shows both columns separately.