Quick Mortgage questions.

Kuztardd

If i was to apply for a mortgage before having found a property, I believe it is held open for 6 months.

During this “holding phase”, would I have paid any money to apply for a mortgage?

What should happen if I didn’t find a place before the 6 months is up? Would it cost me anything? Do you then reapply/renegotiate?

Should I accept one, (but before I find a place), and then find an even better mortgage elsewhere, am I allowed to change/cancel, or would I be tied in?
Would this affect any credit ratings?

is this common?

also:
Can I get a couple or different mortgage brokers working for me?
Is this unethical, pointless, or recommended to see whom could find the best deal.

cheers again..
and one day i will hopefully be able to reply to others questions once i have some knowledge

Vickicb

You are talking about an Agreement In Principle (AIP) and I don't think there is a cost involved, it simply means that the mortgage company agree to lend you up to a certain amount of money in principle (subject to price and survey of house you put an offer on).

You won't be tied into this should you see a better offer later on.

I can't see the point of different mortgage brokers as long as you use a whole of market one.

lipo

Don't forget that you are always done a credit check, whatever you apply for. So don't get carried away
lipo

lynzpower

Kuztardd wrote:

If i was to apply for a mortgage before having found a property, I believe it is held open for 6 months.

During this “holding phase”, would I have paid any money to apply for a mortgage?

What should happen if I didn’t find a place before the 6 months is up? Would it cost me anything? Do you then reapply/renegotiate?

Should I accept one, (but before I find a place), and then find an even better mortgage elsewhere, am I allowed to change/cancel, or would I be tied in?
Would this affect any credit ratings?

is this common?

also:
Can I get a couple or different mortgage brokers working for me?
Is this unethical, pointless, or recommended to see whom could find the best deal.

cheers again..
and one day i will hopefully be able to reply to others questions once i have some knowledge

Hi again
If you use an all of market fee free broker, that is aalighned to the "association of mortgage brokers" or whatever its called, cant remember, theres no need to use more than one.

what wil happen is you make appointment with broker ( order prevoius bank statements if you need them NOW, not part way through the process as I did, it holds things up massively!) and take your bank statements, passport, birth cert and any other important bits & pieces just in case,

Youll tell them what dep youve got, what you are looking for in terms of houses and their prices.

they then look to see what sort of mortgages you could get.

they will talk over the differences between fixed rates, variable rates, trackers and any others that might be around

they wil talk over the difference between repayment & IO mortgages too.

they will show you the figures from thier "top deals" these change fairly regularly ( going up mainly at the mo)

In my case there were 4 lenders who looked OK, the abbey was the cheapest, by about 15 a month, so I chose that

then we filled out the forms and she photocopied some of my stuff ( this was a few days later, when I came back with everything) and then sent this to abbey.

Abbey then told her, yes, agreement in principle & she told me and a letter was sent to me confirming up.

this lastsfor 6 months, however, if you are midway through the process, then you can ask the lender fgor extensions. the toughie is in these days of rising interest rates, they may not offer you the same product for the same price later. However, you only know by trying, and i wouldnt overly panic about this unneccesarily.

Kuztardd

yay, i knew i could count on all your advice.. thank you.
so much to learn, but it is sinking in!!

(now if you could just answer me whether, now is a great time to buy or not and what interest rates are going to do i will love you all forever more..)

Milky_Mocha

No-one can foretell the future but everyone has an opinion. Mine is that prices will have fallen by the end of this year but they will begin to rise again next year. However waiting for prices to fall could also mean you'd be paying a higher interest rate by then so you wouldn't necessarily be better off.