HSBC remortgage: any recent experience?

Foxrunner

I'm applying to remortgage with HSBC's lifetime tracker special (BBR+1.79%) and wondered if anyone had any recent experience, positive or negative, with HSBC's remortgaging process.

I've just read the overwhelmingly negative reviews at Review Centre .com so I'm hoping there might be more balanced views on this forum.

As part of the telephone application I kept checking that there were no hidden fees, other than the £99 stated, and when pressed he did say there might be a nomimal charge (£30, although again I had to press him to be precise) if their outsourced legal team needed to confirm my identity. Then, right at the end, he mentioned that an extra £1000 would be added to the mortgage automatically (why would they do this, if all along we specified how much we needed to borrow?!?) but that he'd add a note saying that we wouldn't need it.

What's been your experience with HSBC remortgages?

Cheers

Matt

m_13

We're just moving our mortgage to HSBC as we move to another property. The application people were lovely, the branch were useless (didn't do the proof of identity stuff properly) and I found the Indian call centre to be quite poor. Everything seems to have 5 day SLAs with things done on the 5th day. However, once we were with a decision maker things moved quickly and they've been efficient since. I took to ringing them up each morning asking where we were at and what they were waiting for. We paid a valuation fee plus a structural survey on top of the £99 but that's it. Our solicitor was already on their panel so no problem there.

GMS

HSBC have great rates but are very picky. I speak to many people who have been messed about by them. That said I would obviously not speak to people who have had good experiences as they will have had their mortgage approved!

Squeaky clean low LTV cases are what they want.

Good luck with the app

Thrugelmir

Foxrunner wrote: »

I
I've just read the overwhelmingly negative reviews at Review Centre .com so I'm hoping there might be more balanced views on this forum.

Negative because they were declined maybe?

HSBC are a conservative lender. Consistantly so through the credit boom unlike NR and B&B for example. They offer good interest rates as they have high underwriting lending criteria. So correspondingly suffer fewer defaults. Think of HSBC as a traditional bank of say 20 -30 years ago. The way banks used to lend, and quite possibly over time the age we are heading back to.