Mortgage Adviser or source myself?

Not a fan of lifetime fees myself. The fact of the matter is that under that arrangement the broker is earning fees via the commission. So at that stage you're no different from a fee fee broker.

I think its a highly individual thing how we charge our fees. I work on this basis as I live in a small area not connected to a particular city or large town and most people know each other. As such there is a big wealth divide in this area and I couldn't with good conscience charge a client for repeat business. Most of my business is face to face and comes from referrals from existing customers and friends. When people take the time to sit down in front of you, they see the effort you make and you don't lose clients you gain them.


Internet clients on the other hand I find are less reliable and its not my preferred business model - you can get used and abused if you work fee free over the internet. So I can understand why a broker would charge a fee every time in this instance, or perhaps if they lived in a wealthy area and were giving very complex advice.

Don't bother with a broker.
No offence to any on here, but in my experience they are completely useless and a waste of money.
Why pay someone to do something you could easily do yourself?

Had a bad experience with the first one I saw, who applied for multiple mortgages on my behalf with hard footprints. A year later and my credit score is still suffering.

Finding the rate is 0.1% of the job.

The other 99.9% is satisfying lender criteria, docs requirements etc and smoothing the way to a quick and easy offer.

There are poor brokers out there, just as there's poor everything but on here we get more issues with those going direct than those using a broker, IMHO. There is little "joined-up" thinking and lenders are very poor at explaining how the mortgage and purchase processes work together and "what happens next" is often left to chance.