advantage mortgages

fkelanne

any1 had a mortgage with?and are they any good

lozzer1701

not that i know anything about all their products, but the mortgage we've ended up with is hideous. £70000 interest-only, with an interest rate that's currently a gnat's whisker off 10% and repayments nearly £600 a month just for the interest. i'm sure that the financial 'advisor' we had said we would have a discounted rate that increased every year for 3 years, but we seem to have had rate increases at least twice in the last year...and we're tied by a nasty early-repayment charge- it started off at about £6000. that has gone down to £4200, but that's still a lot of money to lose-and we're stuck for another 2 years.
what i would say is if you can go anywhere else, do so. they may be willing to lend you the money in untoward circumstances, but from our experience it will cost you dearly. these loans you see on the tv are cheaper...

fkelanne

ye my partner has a default on his credit report. so the adviser has advised us to take the morgage with them.

lozzer1701

fkelanne wrote: »

ye my partner has a default on his credit report. so the adviser has advised us to take the morgage with them.

similar with me, in certain respects...except we almost got a mortgage with the abbey even with my partner's lousy credit history. what stuffed it up was legal & general/northen rock losing the deeds to the house, and by the time they'd 'found' them, the offer had expired. we ultimately ended up with an advantage mortgage cos he briefly went self-employed during the 18 MONTHS it took the advisor to sort the mortgage out...by the time advantage had sorted themselves out as well, he was on the books again!! so why the hell we've ended up with it, i don't know...
maybe it's just me..but that's why i've come to this site for advice first. i'm certainly very wary of 'financial advisors' (no disrespect meant to anyone here!!) now, as we seemed to have had such a rough ride. i don't know what anyone else's thoughts are, but i would gather as much info from here as you can before you take a plunge for this. there may well be more options out there for you than even your advisor realises

kingkano

It sounds like you have a stepped discount tracker then. It would have gone up twice in the last 6mths for the 2 interest rate increases (thats the tracker bit). Stepped would mean the discount would change every x years. So maybe it was a 4% for 1 yr, 3% for next yr etc.

It does sound a hideous rate though so as soon as you can clean up your problems Id be looking to remortgage to something else.

luckyfool

Your mortgage with Advantage will have been through Advantage the packager, they were bought by Morgan Stanley only relatively recently to become Advantage Homeloans - the lender. They have only been an actual lender for about 6 months so I very much doubt your mortgage is actually an Advantage Homeloans product.

Advantage Homeloans rates are pretty competitive and generally market leading or thereabouts in the adverse credit market, the downside is really their service is beyond abysmal so I would personally steer well clear.

Hope this helps,

Luckyfool