Need a better rate - but hubby out of work (temp)

Greenwellies_2

Hi,

I was wondering whether someone would be able to shed some light on this for me.

My lower rate mortgage ends in December, so I need to get the ball rolling in May. However, hubby is out of work at the moment. He should be back in work by May, but will this affect our mortgage offer. (the fact that it is a new job and possibly on a trial period etc)

If I don't get this sorted I am going to me majorly stuffed in December.

Thanks in anticipation

Greenwellies

infobank

Your existing lender probably has a few "existing retetnion deals" that they will offer - but you may have to phone them up and ask first, as some dont offer them automatically.
Theyt are set at a level that, whilst uncompetitive at first glance, look a whole lot better when the costs or remortgaging to another lender are taken in to account.
As your existing lender already mortgages your property, all that should be required is signatures to agree the switch over to the new rate.

The smaller the mortgage, the more the existing lenders retention deal makes sense.

While some lenders like to see 6 months in current employment, others simply ask if the new job is permannent or not, and therefor will be happy if the applicant has only been in it for 1 day.

A mortgage broker willl know which lenders to approach for this, but may I suggest you search for broker that does not charge you a fee, but works on the lenders "procuration fee" alone.
This way, he wont get paid unless he succeeeds in getting you the new mortgage, as opposed to a broker that charges a fee, even if they fail to secure you a mortgage offer.

Quite a few estate agents wil have in house brokers that work purely on the procuration fee, and are hungry for the business.
They also have limited clients to work with, and have to be on the ball in order to get a mortgage offer for their own agency property sales, when their agency client has less than ideal financial circumstances.
This tends to make them very lender savvy.

Having said all this, I cant emphasise enough the importance of checking with your own lender first to see what they will offer you to hang on to your business.

AndrewSmith

infobank wrote:

A mortgage broker willl know which lenders to approach for this, but may I suggest you search for broker that does not charge you a fee, but works on the lenders "procuration fee" alone.
This way, he wont get paid unless he succeeeds in getting you the new mortgage, as opposed to a broker that charges a fee, even if they fail to secure you a mortgage offer.

Quite a few estate agents wil have in house brokers that work purely on the procuration fee, and are hungry for the business.
They also have limited clients to work with, and have to be on the ball in order to get a mortgage offer for their own agency property sales, when their agency client has less than ideal financial circumstances.
This tends to make them very lender savvy.

The vast majority of mortgage brokers who charge a fee for their work will also only receive thiss fee unpon successful legal completion of the loan. Therefore it is in these brokers interests also to obtain you a mortgage you will want to keep and will be happy with.

Regarding Estate Agency Brokers:

Having worked as a Financial Services Director for a major chain of estate agents, and having previously been an estate agency broker for 8 years your comments are not completely accurate.

Most estate agency brokers although 'whole of market' will have access to only a limited panel of lenders, in some cases as few as 10-15. This is because most estate agency chains are actually owned or in partnership with either an insurance company or mortgage lender, thus have corperate deals with a select few in return for reciprocal survey business etc. For example, I bet you never realised that Fox & SOn's, Allen & Harris, Roger Platt, William H Brown, Gribble Booth Taylor, Sweetnams, Barnard Marcus, Connells, and all the Sequence group are in fact owned by Skipton Building Society?

There is nothing better than an independant mortgage broker who has no limitations of a panel of lenders and who is not owned or tied to another company or lender. This way you know he is working on your behalf with your best interests at heart as opposed to singing the corperate song.

Use local pages to find an independant broker near you, or better still, take recommendations from friends or family of someone they have used.

Andy

MortgageMamma

Hi greenwellies,

May I suggest that its a little early to be looking for your replacement mortgage, and pehaps around beginning of October will be ideal. You really have nothing to worry about at the moment, I'm sure if your husband is working before december everything will be fine.

As Andy says above, make sure the broker you talk to truely is whole of market. Avoid estate agency brokers as they mostly are tied agents. Oh and don't listen to anything infobank says, he talks absolute twaddle.

Good luck

HelpWhereIcan

Greenwellies,

I would not think that you will have too many problems. There are lenders who will want you to be employed for a minimum period, but there are also lenders that will not mind if you started a job yesterday and some who will not care if you are in a probationary period.

I would agree with MM that the time to review it will actually be October.

As the others have said, get some advice from a broker, but Infobank is spot on when he says to check what your exisiting lender will offer too (or use a broker that will check too).

MortgageMamma wrote:

Oh and don't listen to anything infobank says, he talks absolute twaddle.

Good luck

:rotfl: Personally, I think he is a broker, compliance bod or FSA minion. I'll put all my money (all 3p of it) on being an adviser within a national estate agency chain who does not realise what a cushy life having loads of branch leads is. There are times I wish I could go back and be an order taker working for an estate agent again.

Some estate agent advisers are very good (I was one for a while ), but I believe that they very rarely have to deal with something out of the ordinary. My own real education did not start until I worked for an independent under a very good adviser. No one is more hungry for your business than the adviser wanting a client bank that they can service long term; certainly not the estate agency based adviser who has business spoon fed to them by the branch staff and who you will never hear from again (unless you approach them)!

infobank

Nothing wrong with a tied agent if they can get you a good deal and you dont have to pay them anything for it.

"Whole of Market" simply means that the mortgage broker has:

considered a sufficiently large number of
regulated mortgage contracts which are generally
available from the market;

The above is the FSA definition.
It has been written this way because it is physically impossible for any broker to offer every lenders product.
Some are exclusive and are only available form the lenders direct, or from tied agents.

Hence the reason to check with your own lender to see what they will offer you as a first step.
The products offered by your own lender, will not, in all probability be available for a "whole of market" broker to offer to you.

And of course, you dont have to pay a fee for them.

Which brings me on to the point of using an "independent"

I have copied below paragraphs from moneysavingexperts downloadable fee guide which throws a bit of light on to the "whole of market" and "independet" myth.

It makes interesting reading, and is available here:
http://www.brochurecentre.co.uk/pdf/L&C%20remort%20guide.pdf

There are two key questions to ask a broker.
“Are you whole of market?” This means “will it look at all the UK’s mortgage lenders to
pick the best for you”. If not, forget it.
Unfortunately the FSA left brokers a loophole, allowing some to claim ‘whole of
market’ status while offering only a panel of lenders, providing it’s reviewed to include the
‘best deals’ roughly every two months. This is simply not frequent enough in the fast
moving mortgage market.
The more advanced question, “could you, right now, source a mortgage for me
from any available UK mortgage lender?” should help cut the wheat from the chaff.

A Martin’s Mortgage Moment
A couple the brokers miss
A small number of mortgage lenders don’t offer their products through
mortgage brokers. Under the regulations, ‘whole of market’ is technically
defined as the whole of the ‘available’ market, therefore these don’t have to be
included in the comparison. At the time of writing, the only major players who
this effects are HSBC, Egg and Yorkshire Building Society so it may be worth
going separately to them as well as the brokers to be double assured of the very
best deal.

“How will you make your money?” Brokers have two sources of income.
Commission. Lenders pay brokers a ‘procuration fee’ a whopping 0.3% to 0.5% of
the mortgage’s value, rising up to 1% for ‘sub-prime’ mortgages (for people with poor
credit). On a £150,000 mortgage that’s £375 to £1,500.
Fees. Brokers may also charge you a fee directly. No reputable broker will charge more
than 1.25%, even for ‘sub-prime’ customers. Do not use anyone charging more.
Previously fees could only be charged on mortgage completion, now, providing they
inform you initially, they can charge at any point in the process. However, even though
it’s legal, avoid any broker charging before completion, it can cause problems if things
change later.
Many brokers both charge fees and take commission. However, to call themselves
‘independent’, an option to pay fees only, with any commission earned rebated to you,
must be available.
In practice this is bunkum. For example, you may be given the option to either pay a
typical 1% fee in full and get the 0.35% commission rebated or alternatively just pay a
0.65% fee with it keeping the commission – in other words, no difference.
Worse still, it means a truly whole of market broker, only taking commission, can’t call
itself independent even though it is providing the same advice and is cheaper.

AndrewSmith

In my limited experience as a broker (12 or more years) I have to say that I have never had a lender able to offer a retention deal that I do not have myself, unless that lender does not deal with brokers (HSBC etc) in which case I send the client direct.

What is more common is that I have access to deals with a lender that is not offered at branch level.


Infobank. You obviously have somewhere in these cut and pasted paragraphs some point to make. Be an adult and simply state the point you are trying to make clearly, and based on correct facts or personal experience from within the industry, instead of pasting copied paragraphs from articles that we have all read anyway.

If you are here to act clever by trying to wrongfoot the brokers who give their time freely to support Martin Lewis and his website, without personal gain (as this is against the rules of the site) then I am afraid my friend you will fail miserably.

Martin Lewis himself is personally grateful for the generic advice and help given to the public on his site by the Brokers who frequent it. In his own words, 'brokers are the mortgage good guys'.

State what point you are making, and what it has to do with the particular thread on which your outpourings are being posted. After all this thread is not about you or your opinions, it is a genuine request for assistance and help from a member of the public who wants an answer based on the experience and knowledge of the poeple who frequent this board.

The thread is not here for you to try and incite argument or debate, or try to sully the reputation of brokers or advisors, and the information the give freely on this board.

If you think you are doing the posters here a favour you, again, are very much mistaken as you will drive the genuine people away as they do not have the time or motivation to read snippets of information posted completely out of context.

I would also suggest, and I am not the only one who thinks this, that you check your information is factually correct before posting here in contradiction to qualified professional advisers who have no point to prove, or nothing to gain from bein in-accurate.

Andy

MortgageMamma

I couldnt have put that better myself Andy. Thankyou for your balanced analysis of the situation and your eloquent and thoughtful post.

stanmoresaver

AndrewSmith wrote:

There is nothing better than an independant mortgage broker who has no limitations of a panel of lenders and who is not owned or tied to another company or lender. This way you know he is working on your behalf with your best interests at heart as opposed to singing the corperate song.

Use local pages to find an independant broker near you, or better still, take recommendations from friends or family of someone they have used.

Andy

Absolutely-

Very rare to hear someone advocating the use of the Estate Agents Mortgage "broker" this day and age. Nice one InfoBank!

infobank

The point is simply this:

"independence" and "whole of market" are held aloft with sort of "holier than thou" attitude, when the truth is that "independence" purely relates to fee paying options, and "whole of market" is a misleading term.
Martins own guide says so.

Because the people that come to these boards for help are generally vunerable, it is important that they are told the truth, given the facts, told the lenders names that can assist them.

However, what I seem to be seeing frequently, from quite a few regular contributors, is the promotion of "independent whole of market" advice, instead of simply dealing with the enquiriers question. It seems to be a place to advertise your services and provide links back to your own web sites.

So many times the easiest and most practical solution to a fresh enquiry is to say something like "I suggest you talk to the ABC building Society, becasue they do what you need"
Of course, it means the businesss is being given away; I quote a regular contributors response from an earlier posting, asking for the name of a lender that would lend a high income multiple:

"Im not telling! How the heck do you guys think us brokers make living? Not by telling all!"

which shows that although the contributor knew the answer, they wouldn't tell........ and not because they deemed it "advice" but simply that by doing so they would be empowering the enquirer who could now go direct.

Surely this forum is to assist those who need help, and not use it as a way of drumming up business by way of links back to the broker contributors web sites, or "compliance signatures" that advertise their services.

From where I sit, these boards seem to be being used by regulated mortgage brokers to advertise their services, rather than to supply the much needed hard information that could so easily assist or point in the right direction.

Not by all, obviously, but it is very easy to spot the ones that are.

Any contributor that says that they are not here to use the boards to drum up trade could simply prove it by removing their links back to their own web sites, and remove blatant adverts like this:

"If you want specific advice from me please click on my name and go to my homepage."

AndrewSmith

Is that why you removed your own link to your website (such that it was) only yesterday?

Just have a look at the number of times some of us have been thanked for the advice given. We are asked by Martin (who incidentally owns this website) to clearly state if we have experience or qualifications in any given field.


Also, any broker who uses this forum to 'drum up business' would have to be very desparate. I personally do not need to as I have more than enough business demonstrated by the fact that I usually cannot contact everyone who comes to me for help.

I respect your opinion, however I do not agree with it, and you are way off the mark regarding the insinuation that brokers are not helping people on this site.

It is posts like yours that do not help. When I hear it from the owner of this site that I am not helping the posters in line with the site owner's rules then I will stop.

I also find a lot of what you say defamatory to me personally and brokers in general. You obviously have little or no industry experience and, as such, I am no longer going to enter into any exchange of childish ill-informed posts by you. When you have something helpful to say that will be different.

Consider your point made, read, digested, and the necessary attention will be given to it.

Now for goodness sake move on and get ovwer yourself.



@ forum moderators:

Please can you separate these posts off to a new thread as the un-necessary argument being caused here is detracting from the help asked for by the original poster?

@ Greenwellies It is not normally like this I assure you, apologies on behalf of us genuinely helpful people here.