London & Country – A word of warning

Cryogenic

I am also in the process of getting a mortgage through L&C and as a FTB it was a relief to speak to somebody who is on your side (as opposed to estate agents). The product that they offered me a 2year A&L BoEBRT -0.16% was better than any that I had found on mortgage comparision websites and was suitable for my situation (i.e income multiples allowed and the fact that A&L acted quickly to arrange the survey as the vendor would not take the house off the market until survey was booked). The hard sell on insurance products has not happened other than a discussion of what is available and a follow up email, in fact they (with your permission) pass your details to an insurance broker for buildings insurance and do not try to sell it to you directly. The only additional product that I am getting through them is joint level term life assurance where the permium was less than I had previously been quoted for on some website discussed in one of Martin's articles.
So far my impression of their service has been very good, but I agree that the defintion of whole of market can seem ambiguous to a mortgage newbie like me.

santana-mx3

When I went to L&C, they actually told me that "Whole of market" means that they check every single product available and that there is no lender they do not check. That's something which didn't match up with what I had read on this site before. They recommended the Woolwich Lifetime Value Tracker (which is the one I was already planning on going for).

What I was not happy with was that I was told on a Tuesday that if I posted L&C the completed application form, Woolwich would give me a decision in principle "almost instantaneously" (and he expected that to be on the Thursday of the same week) and it would then take around 4 weeks for a formal offer. I thought the same Thursday was cutting it a bit fine if L&C had to forward my form on to Woolwich. Anyway, at the weekend I had a letter from L&C confirming that they have forwarded the application to Woolwich and that L&C have done their bit now and I now have to deal direct with Woolwich (which I wasn't expecting, but I have never dealt with an intermediary before so it's possibly a sign of my ignorance on how they work).

At the end of the following week, having not heard any further, I phoned Woolwich only to be told that they had only received the application from L&C two days ago and that they take 10 working days to check the application form and ID provided before they go to the next stage of checking income and getting a survey done. They said they don't give decisions in principle if you have actually applied for a mortgage (apparently L&C have to state whether it is required and they had not done, so it went for full processing). They were also very surprised that L&C have asked us to liaise directly with them now that the application has been sent in as they would normally send all info via the intermediary.

I would have thought that L&C and Woolwich would each have a better understanding of how the other work so that I could be given correct information. Had I known about the timescales etc., I would either have gone to my previous lender to get a speedy service and then switched later or would have done the Woolwich application at a Barclays branch.

As for other insurances etc., I did not get any hard sell from L&C. In fact I didn't get any sell of any sort. The letter from L&C says that if I don't hear from them within 5 working days about insurance products that I should phone the numbers they have given to request details.

AndrewSmith

A couple of things to note:

In my experience Woolwich are one of the worst lenders to deal with. Their service standards and response times are absolutely appauling and have been for some years now. No surprise really that Barclays have decided to disband Woolwich with the loss of some 1200 jobs.

Regarding applications via a broker or intermediary. It is standard practice for allinformation, queries, forms, documents, updates,communication etc etc to go via the broker. After all that is what they are being paid for, unless the case was submitted on a 'non-advice' basis.

You are quite correct that 'whole of market' does not mean every lender. I always suggest that the broker firm / intermeidary is asked about his market access and whether there are any limitations on the lenders he can use. For example, Connells estate agency (who are owned by Skipton Building Society) Brokers have a panel of 21 lenders, their brokers are not allowed to go 'off panel' however they are still called 'whole of market'.

The questions you should ask of a broker you are thinking of using are:

Do you charge?
If you charge how much is it and when is it payable?
Do you operate from a 'panel' of lenders or do you have full market access? (Get a direct answer to this as many 'panel' brokers will reply with "we are whole of market").
How long have you been transacting residential mortgages and what experience do you have?
What are your hours of business / contact times?
Do you operate face to face or by phone/post, or a combination of the two?

If a broker says they operate both face to face and over that phone make sure that you are aware of any additional fees charged by the firm for face to face meetings. Some charge extra for this, some don't.

Hope this helps

Andy

santana-mx3

AndrewSmith wrote:

In my experience Woolwich are one of the worst lenders to deal with. Their service standards and response times are absolutely appauling and have been for some years now.

Oh dear. I wish I'd known that before I applied! There was a better rate from a building society I had never heard of before but I ignored it because I had no idea how good or otherwise they were. I think I should have gone with my previous lender just to get the house purchase sorted and then switched when not under pressure.

AndrewSmith wrote:

You are quite correct that 'whole of market' does not mean every lender.

I was worried when he said that they check every product from every lender because once they say one thing which doesn't ring true, it does dent trust/confidence somewhat. However, since they picked the product I was already considering going for (and which several others on here had gone for), I went ahead with L&C thinking it would be worth it if they deal
with the lender for me.

AndrewSmith wrote:

Regarding applications via a broker or intermediary. It is standard practice for allinformation, queries, forms, documents, updates,communication etc etc to go via the broker. After all that is what they are being paid for, unless the case was submitted on a 'non-advice' basis.

That's what I had thought. That was the point of going through them. According to the KFI, they did advise me (although they picked the product I was already considering - I don't know whether I should have told them what I was considering or not). Their letter says to deal direct with the lender until the formal offer is received, then to go back to L&C for them to see if it is still the best deal for me or if they can find something better. By that stage I don't think I'd want to start applying again with another lender.

santana-mx3

Follow-up: Woolwich say L&C didn't give them their "Mortgage Club" membership no. which holds things up. They are asking ME to find this out for them. So not only are L&C not dealing with queries etc. on the application, expecting me to deal with them myself, but I am also supposed to get their membership no. for Woolwich (presumably to assist with payment of commission)!

Woolwhich are also asking for a completely different "application/valuation fee" than I was quoted via the broker. Broker quoted £0 application fee and £385 valuation fee for Homefile 1 or £615 valuation fee for Homefile 2. Woolwich have asked for £230 from me and £230 from my wife (what's that about - why are there two valuation charges of arbitrary amounts when we are buying one property?). They are also asking for my card details. I gave these to L&C as part of the application where they requested card details for payment of valuation fees.

Phoning Woolwich is an absolute pain. They keep you on hold for ages on a premium rate number. The last call cost £2.18 and some of the "info" they give is contradictory.

I think Woolwich have already done a credit check so it probably isn't safe to back out of this and re-apply direct to our previous lender.

payless

woolwich recently had a market leading product, so service or not I found myself recommending it ( not used for a while) service was not perfect , but in fairness not as bad as some other big lenders.

As brokers we also hate wasting time and money n hold for ages whilst phoning a lender- worse on 08 numbers , but as we get paid , its just another cost thats taken from the quoed commssion earned

Mortgageman

Santana-mx3 - ", at the weekend I had a letter from L&C confirming that they have forwarded the application to Woolwich and that L&C have done their bit now and I now have to deal direct with Woolwich"

In this letter you should have been introduced to your case manager (who the letter is from) giving you their direct dial telephone number. If you are having problems give them a ring.

I'll have a look at the wording of the letter, as it doesn't seem to have been very clear - the message that we are trying to get across is "The lender will ask for some further info, frankly it just delays things if we sit in the middle - so we will ask them to come to you for any info they need. If you've got any questions or problems though, you have a named individual here at L&C to troubleshoot" I'm sorry if this message didn't get through clearly - we're trying to minimise delays / confusion rather than create more!

Some lenders are more difficult to deal with than others - your adviser should have discussed this with you when you were applying, particularly if you indicated that time was important.

As ever, if you've got any questions, or need any other info feel free to either post on the board (although I only check sporadically), or send me a PM