Countrywide Mortgage Services

outrim

Anyone had any dealings with them regarding First Time Buyers as myself and the missus are looking at buying and had a viewing with Bairstow Eves who have an independant advisor from Countrywide Mortgage Services in their office.

They are apparently NOT whole of market but say they their advice is FREE. Next meeting is to take passport, P60's etc which makes me too wary as we are not going to buy just yet!

Help!

** Many thanks to all that have replied to this **

evening_all

Hi,

We are just going through our first purchase and fell into the 'Countrywide' trap. Don't trust them as far as you can throw them. They make their money off you at the end by securing a mortgage then make commission that way.

As far as we we're concerned he was only interested in pressuring us into taking out a mortgage he advised us on and insisted on putting the offer in on the house for us when it blatently didn't have anything to do with him. In the end after him pestering us all the time, we binned him off and decided on getting our mortgage ourselves which we've done and are only a couple of weeks for completion.

My advice is - stay well clear and don't let them con you into applying for an AIP. Search for your mortgage yourself or go to a whole market FA who's interest is securing the best mortgage for you, not them!

Person_one

The words 'don't' 'touch' and 'bargepole' spring to mind.

I won't go into detail as the main issue I'm thinking of is still going through some legal wrangling, but they are utterly corrupt and incompetent.

Southsaver_2

I went to Countrywide to see about a mortgage. After two weeks they got back to me with some lenders, but obviously misplaced my details as the lenders wouldn't have accepted my circumstances. I told them the details again and they said they will get back to me in a few days; they never phoned back.

Niowrtt

I am using them for a house move. Take their free advice by all means, then walk away and arrange things yourself. Do not allow them to talk you around into using their services.

I told them to do everything as I was buying and selling through the same CountryWide owned estate agent and didn't have the time or will to arrange everything.

It was a mistake, a big mistake. I'm doing just as much work and it's just as stressful, but I am paying more for it.

And I am paying a lot:

The CW solicitors fees are more than double what I paid last year - in fact, CountryWide's commission from them is almost as much as the local solicitor charged me in total for the same job.

They are taking a small arrangement fee for the mortgage, AND getting a kickback of hundreds of pounds from the mortgage providers.

There have been many mistakes along the way. One good one was that they have provided me an insurance quote for a seaside property which was invalid for houses within 700meters of water. A property their office visited and photographed the view from.

And the CountryWide estate agents themselves like their money. The fee for using them to sell the current property has worked out at 3% and I'm unsold after 6 months. Their current trick is to call me every week or so to arrange viewings while I'm at work, but not turn up.

As they say: when the person with money meets the person with experience, one walks away with both and the other with only experience.

jockosjungle

Here is my very recent experience.

I was looking in the window of Entwistle Green and saw a cheap newish house for £50k, they'd covered up half the notice with an advert so all we did was want to go in and ask what the catch was - was it shared ownership, etc.

We went in and asked, before we even did anything there mortgage adviser had bundled us into a room and gave us a high pressure sales pitch. He promised the earth, basically the only reason house sales fall through was because he didn't deal with them all. He promised...

To put in offers on our behalf - apparently I was deemed incapable of doing this myself, as I am stupid fool who will be taken for a ride by the estate agent. A countrywide MA is on the ball and cannot be played with. On reflection I took this to mean he would sit down with the estate agent and tell them how much you can really afford and how much you are really prepared to pay, it would give the best deal for his commission and the EA commission, and you'd end up paying more.

Search 10 Mortgage Companies - apparently because they give them so much business, they do super deals just for them. the only two I had heard of was natwest and scottish widows.

Would chase up the mortgage lender on your behalf - his spiel involved that the major banks were incompetent and only he can get a mortgage application passed. Thinking about it what he meant was that you would phone him and then he would phone the same contact centre on your behalf, and then tell you how it was getting on. Seemed to be adding a middleman to be honest.

There were no fees - Actually there were fees, you had to pay him £99 after you moved in.

All I can say is that the Estate Agents seemed more interested in selling me a mortgage than they did a house. I found out that the £50k house was a one bed, I checked on rightmove when I got home.


I haven't yet got myself a house as yet, however this is my advice. Go and see YOUR bank, I went to see the HSBC as I have banked with them for 19 years. The man wasn't pushy, I explained what we were after, what deposit we currently had and what we hoped to save. At the time I was speaking hypothetically based on what he would let us borrow if we had more deposit. But he happily spent half an hour talking through various options and doing a budget with us. He then printed out a mortgage contract signed by himself saying what the HSBC would lend us valid for 3 months.

If you get one of these AIP or mortgage contracts from your bank, if an estate agents asks if you have a mortgage you can just say "I have a mortgage contract/ AIP from HSBC/Your Bank" when I've said this to other agents they're quite happy with this but do add that I might like to see their MA, but happily let me look round properties in the meantime.

You can get an AIP from HSBC online, if you go into an EA without anything in place to say what you can borrow they're well within their rights to sit you down with someone to get an AIP, so go in with your own!

Aside from what I have said about the CW MA, I'd say he was very pushy, we asked about info on house and he was filling out a mortgage application! We were in a hot, windowless room for a good hour, while he gave us the hard sell.

You've banked with your bank no doubt for years, I think its only fair you should speak to them first. They're generally friendly and not very pushy and happy to spend some time with you even if you're just interested in seeing what you can get. I doubt they work on massive commissions like CW, so the desperate need to sell you a mortgage isn;t there. Obviously you may want to dig around as well with a real Mortgage advisor instead, but an AIP from a bank will allow you to view properties and say that you don't want to see a MA at this time but may do so in the future.

Remember each EA has a mortgage adviser in their office it seems, its a lot of wasted hours having to sit through them all

R

new_home_owner_3

I had a experiance with countrywide and if i would have used them it would of cost us over 200 pound a month more.

I would never use a mortgage brokers/advisers the reason being a lot of the best deals are not available to them.

I mean look at this the top 13 two year mortgage deals where not not available to any broker/adviser, and could only be got by going direct to the banks/lender.

My advice would be try a borker and then see what you can get, but i would think 9 times out of 10 you will get a better deal going direct to the lender.

In today's nervy mortgage market, a broker's skills can be reassuring. But as you've discovered, many are being frozen out by banks and unable to offer customers the best deals. Last week, research by Moneyfacts found that the top 13 deals for a two-year, fixed-rate home loan (based on £150,000 mortgage) were only available direct from lenders. Why? Thanks to the credit crunch and higher cost of offering home loans, lenders have been bombarded with applications. Too much business threatens their profits, so they're now clamping down on deals via brokers – to whom they would also have to pay expensive commission. This leaves you in an uncomfortable position; to get the best of both worlds, you'll have to do double the work. "Borrowers who want the best deals have been landed with not only with the research, but possibly all of the administration of arranging their mortgage," says Katie Tucker, of mortgage broker John Charcol.
Be under no illusion – it can be a mountain to climb. First, ask two brokers to find you the best suitable deals. Don't worry if they're fee-charging: "Brokers are not paid until completion, so you won't have to pay anything to simply seek their advice," says Melanie Bien, of broker Savills Private Finance.

Henry_P_Chester

I would never get involved with any mortgage advisor linked to an estate agent. You are basically telling the agent your exact financial position and I gaurantee you will be paying the maximum you cam afford for any purchase.

jockosjungle

That was my thought Henry, he tried to make out he was doing you a favour and how he was in the trade. But he sat next to the estate agent and he's hardly going to not have an opinion on how much we can genuinely afford and whether they can be squeezed for a bit more money.

R