Is Accord the right choice for us ?

sophieev

Hi

I would be very grateful for any advice / experience anyone could offer based on my situation below.

We have had an offer accepted on a property at £600,000 give or take a few pounds.

We are first time buyers and are looking for a 75% LTV mortgage. We have a combined salary of £144,000.

We have been looking to buy for some time and are really keen to secure this property. It is in a fairly high demand area and, although the agent has taken it "off the market", we are very aware that it won't be ours until it is ours. We do not want to risk the sale falling through.

Our broker has found a good rate on a 5yr fix with Accord which I think we would like to go with.

We have done extensive searches on here and elsewhere in an effort to learn more about the various lenders and their service standards and policies. Our findings on Accord are mixed. There do seem to be several complaints about the length of time it takes for them to approve a mortgage offer, although our broker suggests they are no different to any other lender in this respect. There also seem to be some complaints from applicants who have been denied when they thought approval would just be a formality, but I would assume our broker would have mentioned it if he thought this was a material risk for us (taking into account our financial circumstances).

Does anyone have recent experience of applying for a mortgage with Accord ?

Is the process from application to offer excessively long and drawn out ? Their website suggests an average of 15 working days, which strikes me as fairly long but as an FTB I do not really have much to compare this against. We are concerned that the longer we wait for a final mortgage offer, the greater the the risk that we lose our property. We really do not want this to happen and would certainly consider a slightly less attractive rate if that choice made the difference between getting the property and losing it.

Also, are they known to be particularly picky with their offers ? As I mention above there are a few complaints on here from people who thought the final offer would be just a formality but who ended up being turned down. I know there are some brokers on this site, so I would be particularly grateful for any information you might have, taking into account our LTV, salary etc.

Any thoughts and advice would be gratefully received.

John424

I don't on Accord but that's a massive amount of debt to take on on your levels of salary in my opinion. I'm on £200k mortgage 75% LTV with combined salary £110k which I think is high. Pretty serviceable on low interest rates mind so a longer low fix rate mortgage deal may be appropriate before rates start their upward trajectory one day.

Abatement

We were in a fairly similar position to you last year, taking a £330,000 mortgage on a similar sort of salary level, and used Accord with no significant problems. One issue to be aware of is that their SVR is quite high (5.99% I think), but given that you're 5 years away from that, it wouldn't (and didn't) bother me particularly.

I seem to remember it took a couple of days to get an agreement in principle and then a couple of weeks to get a mortgage offer. Make sure the property really is off the market (i.e. no longer on rightmove/agent's website) and then just do your best to keep things moving, giving regular updates to the seller so that they know what's happening.

Abatement

PS: Not an answer to your specific quetsion, but another thing to factor in (given your high salaries) is whether you might be in a position to make overpayments. If so, you might want to consider whether it's worth taking a shorter term deal, so that you can then remortgage onto a better deal when you have a lower LTV.

I took a 5 year deal, and now realise I'd probably have been slightly better off taking a 2 or 3 year deal (or a lifetime tracker with no ERC) and remortgaging. Benefit of hindsight though I guess.

sophieev

Thank you

That is really helpful.
We do have another concern (see my recent post re missed mobile phone payments......) which, judging by the posts on here, may mean Accord simply aren't an option....... All things being equal though, we would like to go with them.

I see what you are saying about the shorter term and overpayments too. We have thought about this. The risk of paying a bit more than we might need to is not really a concern for us. The ERCs and being tied in for 5 yrs - more of a concern. To be honest though, I think we would be happy to go for the five yrs, which should give us some breathing space in order to build up significant savings while overpaying. Ok, no-one knows where rates will be when we come to remortgage but I think we ourselves will be in a better financial position then (and my late phone bills should be less of an issue !), and I am concerned about looking to remortgage in just two years. In fact at the moment i cannot stomach the thought of doing it all again so soon......

John424

You could perhaps think of fixing the length of your mortgage to the amount of time it will take you to get from 75% to 60% i.e. to pay off £90k and get down to the next threshhold although predicting where rates will be in the future is impossible. That's my aim although childcare costs have stopped my ability recently to crank down on the capital like I used to :-(

Abatement

sophieev wrote: »

Thank you

That is really helpful.
We do have another concern (see my recent post re missed mobile phone payments......) which, judging by the posts on here, may mean Accord simply aren't an option....... All things being equal though, we would like to go with them.

I see what you are saying about the shorter term and overpayments too. We have thought about this. The risk of paying a bit more than we might need to is not really a concern for us. The ERCs and being tied in for 5 yrs - more of a concern. To be honest though, I think we would be happy to go for the five yrs, which should give us some breathing space in order to build up significant savings while overpaying. Ok, no-one knows where rates will be when we come to remortgage but I think we ourselves will be in a better financial position then (and my late phone bills should be less of an issue !), and I am concerned about looking to remortgage in just two years. In fact at the moment i cannot stomach the thought of doing it all again so soon......

Yep, all entirely reasonable - just thought I'd point it out in case you hadn't thought of it (which you obviously have).

I'm not a mortgage expert, but I'd doubt a missed phone bill would scupper your chances - just make sure you've got a decent mortgage advisor to get you through it.