Hodge has announced the extension of its Early Repayment Promise (ERP) feature across all of its residential mortgage products.

The move follows the bank’s decision to lower the minimum age of its entire residential mortgage range. Now, customers have the freedom to sell their property without incurring any early repayment charges.

‘Downsizing Protection’ – a familiar term in the equity release market – allows customers to downsize and repay an equity release plan in full without incurring any early repayment charges.

Many equity release products now offer downsizing protection, and Hodge offers this across its equity release product range.

The bank also offers a version of this feature on the ‘Fixed-for-Life’ retirement interest only (RIO) mortgage and its recently-launched ‘Holiday Let’ products – an addition welcomed by mortgage intermediaries.

Hodge is now extending this facility across all of the 50-plus and RIO mortgage products under the newly-branded ‘Early Repayment Promise’.

Matt Burton, managing director of mortgages at Hodge, comments: “We pride ourselves on our flexibility both in the criteria customers have to meet and the products that we offer, so it’s a logical next step to introduce the Early Repayment Promise across all mortgage products.”

“For instance, our ERP enables a holiday let mortgage customer to dip their toe into the holiday let market, judge how the rental yields are and decide whether or not to stick or sell without incurring any Early Repayment Charges.”

The ERP is applicable for all customers who want to sell a property during the term of their mortgage and redeem the mortgage loan in full.

Burton says ERPs, or downsizing guarantees, are attractive and popular in the equity release market, so it made sense to extend the proposition to the rest of the Hodge products.

He concludes: “We believe this added flexibility will be really attractive to customers looking for a 50-plus, RIO or our new Holiday Let mortgages.”