Can anyone recommend a fee-free mortgage broker in London?

alexanderalexander

Hello everyone,
I'm looking for an independent fee-free mortgage broker in London (preferably somewhere central-ish or east). Can anyone recommend one (or tell me if any exist)? I know that there are telephone-only brokers but as I have some quite complicated circumstances so I would like to find a face-to-face broker if possible.

dunstonh

I'm looking for an independent fee-free mortgage broker in London

No such thing exists. Or if they do, they wont be in business long.

Independent means they cannot take the commission paid by a provider. Instead they have to charge you a fee and rebate any commission. (rebate could be higher than the fee or they may find a non commission paying deal is best).

If you want fees free, then you have to use a whole of market adviser who will only look at commission paying deals. This method is not independent (although some independents will allow you to pick this method instead of working on independent basis - i.e. they do both methods)

Which is it that you are looking for?

kingstreet

A quick run through on how brokers operate;-

Independent = fee charging.

They look at all lenders, including those accepting business directly only. If a commission-paying product is used, the commission is paid to you to subsidise your fee.

Whole market = commission earning.

They look only at deals which pay them a commission. Some charge a fee on top of their commission payment.

Take recommendations from friends and relatives. If you can't get one, use https://www.unbiased.co.uk and when searching, switch off the "email and website only" option, so you get a full list.

Was stuck on phone and was typing during dunston's reply.

sunshinesadly

Call Mortgage Monitor - you can google them and find them on the web.

Along with London and Country they are the only brokers that MSE Martin mentions. Both are whole of market and fee-free, they take the commission from the lender if they process an application for you.

I've recently used both and found Mortgage Monitor to be the most accessible and helpful. They recommended a mortgage that they couldn't process (had to apply direct only) and still were happy to discuss mortgages even though they weren't going to earn any money from the call.

Good luck!

alexanderalexander

Thank you for clearing up the distinction between Independent and Whole market, I was confused about that (incidentally I reckon the MSE article could do a better job of explaining this -- the two explanations above were very clear and could be used for it).

To my mind, Independent sounds better (provided the fee isn't too much bigger than the likely commission). Do people agree?

Any specific recommendations, anyway?