The lender is no longer accepting applications for buy-to-let, new build or government schemes including Help to Buy, Shared Ownership and Right to Buy.
However, its product transfer range is not affected.
In a message on its broker website Santander put the change down to the limits of physical valuations no longer being undertaken.
It had previously warned that following the government advice on home moves it was reviewing its product range.
The Santander website notice said: “With immediate effect, due to physical property valuations being placed on hold, we’re temporarily limiting all new purchase and remortgage applications to 75 per cent LTV up to a maximum loan of £350,000.”
In addition, the following new applications are no longer being accepted:
- Residential purchase – over 75 per cent LTV
- Residential remortgage – over 75 per cent LTV
- Buy to let – all LTVs
- New build – all LTVs
- Government schemes including Help to Buy, Shared Ownership, Right to Buy – all LTVs
A Santander spokeswoman told Mortgage Solutions: “We are carefully monitoring the situation with Covid-19 and the impact on the mortgage market, including customers’ ability to access services such as valuations or surveys as the companies offering them, and mortgage providers themselves, are impacted by staff absences.
“As part of this, we have made the difficult decision to temporarily pause the sale of certain mortgage products and will no longer be accepting new Buy-to-Let applications, New Build applications and Purchase or Remortgage applications which have LTVs of over 75%. We will be contacting those customers who have an existing application with Santander who will be impacted by this change.
“We continue to focus on ways in which we can support our mortgage customers in these uncertain times, including by providing mortgage offer extensions and processing over 100,000 applications for a payment holiday.”
Yesterday Santander told Mortgage Solutions that it did not have plans to remove its high loan to value deals as other lenders have done, although it was continually reviewing the market.