Borrowers warned over fees on rejected applications

Its analysis shows up to 19 lenders - around one in five of all lenders - currently charge non-refundable booking fees on some of their mortgage products ranging from £100 to £999.

The technolgy provider said lenders are increasingly imposing non-refundable fees to cover their costs in processing applications and booking preferential rates.

Those who impose the fees on some of their products include HSBC which has the highest fee at £999, Abbey with £995, Nationwide, Yorkshire Building Society and Rugby Building Society.

Lenders who include non-refundable booking fees in their terms and conditions include Cheltenham & Gloucester, Britannia, Ipswich Building Society, Leek Building Society, Stroud & Swindon, Marsden, Nottingham and Skipton.

The average fee charged is around £405 with the lowest coming from Nationwide and Cheltenham & Gloucester at £99 and Leek Building Society at £100.

Julie Speed, national accounts director at Evaluate Technologies said: "If customers are turned down for a mortgage or are forced to pull out of a deal, it will be an extremely unpleasant surprise to find that not getting the mortgage is going to cost a lot of money. Clearly customers need to be certain that they want a mortgage when they start this process, otherwise they could end up incurring unnecessary costs."