Passed soft search app

leereni

Today I spoke to a mortgage advisor, gave my details and he carried out a soft search with halifax. Got back to me later to say I had been successful and could potentially borrow much more than I originally stated. I was cautious, based on previous credit I had from 3 years onwards.

1. How successful are these agreements?

2. What is the situation regarding fees? Advisor stated he charges 99 admin and then 150 application fee once all is approved. How does this compare?

Thanks

shonzyd

1) no experience with halifax so cant comment
2) was this an inhouse broker or independant? Mine charged £149 flat fee but i think thats probably on the lower end of the scale. Mine was an independant whole of market broker and not tied to any bank.

leereni

On point 2, he's not tied to a bank, but I think works with a certain estate agent.

kingstreet

A Halifax soft search should not be relied on by anyone with credit problems, particularly if those problems are more than three years ago at a previous address.

You should only feel confident of the outcome of a Halifax application when a full app has been submitted and a mortgage offer issued.

leereni

Thanks. Please explain this to mortgage advisors.

leereni

Also, do you know which CRA halifax use. The soft search only appeared in my experian report, not call credit. What about a full app?

kingstreet

leereni wrote: »

Thanks. Please explain this to mortgage advisors.

The advisers on here are certainly aware of that.

If you feel your adviser should know that, I have to question why you are using them...

Halifax uses Experian for its main checking, but can log stuff with Equifax as well AFAIK. I'm sure the soft search will appear eventually.

The full search will show on all three copies of your credit file and will be visible to lenders, where the soft search won't.

leereni

Ok thanks. I'm not bothered about doing a full application including experian just call credit as there is an account from about 4 years ago with late payments.

What about nationwide and full applications? Do they use just experian?

leereni

Also kingstreet. Makes me wonder, what's the point of using some mortgage advisors?

I may as well go straight to halifax myself and not pay for any mortgage advisor fees? I wouldn't mind but I've got all my credit reports and he hasn't seen any of them. Just done a soft search with halifax and it passed.

kingstreet

That would be your prerogative.

We advise against using estate agency advisers, as they (on the whole) tend to be young and green and very "salesy" due to their high targets for everything - mortgage, protection, conveyancing and their employers' proclivity for a small lender panel which gets them the highest commission and the most survey business. Then they charge you a fee on top of that!

Admittedly, this view is based on one or two of the bigger "national" players, but that's the way the market is going.

leereni

Yes it seems that way. They seem to be sales driven and the fees definitely put me off. Advisor was keen on carrying out a soft search with halifax based on my pessimistic view of being able to get a mortgage. And when I was successful he appeared to think all was good. We'll see.