Santander’s miscoded mortgage offer may have lost me my property. Badly need help.

Hi all — I’m currently in the process of buying a 35% shared ownership resale in London and I’m trying to work out whether what’s happened to me is just horrific conveyancing chaos or whether Santander have genuinely messed this up badly.

I applied directly to Santander via a comparison site. During the application I explicitly selected that it was a shared ownership resale and that I was buying a 35% share. Santander then instructed a valuation, and the valuation document itself clearly states the property is shared ownership.

They later issued me with a mortgage offer. The offer, which included the valuation, showed:

• full market value: £370,000
• my purchase price: £129,500
• mortgage: £85,000
• deposit: £44,500

So the figures themselves were clearly based on a 35% share purchase. I signed the deeds and sent back to my solicitor.

Everything seemed fine until my solicitor contacted me saying the housing association solicitor couldn’t approve the mortgage offer because it either referred to the wrong ownership percentage or didn’t properly identify the purchase as shared ownership. Apparently Santander then responded saying this “was not a shared ownership application”.

I genuinely thought there must have been some typo or misunderstanding because the valuation literally says shared ownership and the offer itself is financially structured around a 35% share.

I spoke to Santander today and things became even stranger. They told me the application had effectively been processed as a standard residential mortgage and that because it was “execution only”, nobody had “proofread” it. They are now saying shared ownership applications are supposed to go through a mortgage adviser route and I’ve had to start an entirely new application from scratch.

I‘m devastated. I honestly don’t understand how this can happen when:

• I selected shared ownership during the application,
• Santander instructed a shared ownership valuation,
• conversations with Santander/valuation staff confirmed this,
• and the mortgage figures/ affordability assessments themselves only make sense in a shared ownership context. They knew exactly what they were lending, what my deposit was, and what the flat was valued at.

My big worries now are:

• losing my original interest rate,
• paying additional solicitor fees,
• and the seller/housing association pulling out because of delays.

UPDATE:  I spoke to the Santander mortgage advisor this morning. They’re adamant no underwriter has looked at this despite me receiving an email saying “We’ve got all the documentation we need and we’ve sent your application to our underwriters” - and confirmation they’d approved it the following day. I have proof that Santander instructed the valuer that it was shared ownership and the mortgage offer *sent by Santander* to my solicitor contains that valuation report inside it, along with all the relevant figures. They knew it was shared ownership.

The mortgage advisor’s response: “I see where you’re coming from but it’s not a shared ownership product, it’s execution only and that info has been farmed through by the price comparison website. The mortgage offer is wrong. We will need to run this again.”

They can’t honour the original 4.34% five year fixed rate. It’s gone up to 4.98%. They’re having a word with their marketing team so see if they can make an exception. I’m in pieces over this.

What are my legal rights here?