Broker or branch?

welshwizard1927

My fianc!e and I have just had an offer accepted for a property.

By way of background, we're FTB's and have an agreement in principle from a building society after we met with their mortgage advisor back in February and ran through our circumstances, in particular the fact that I am on a fixed term contract (+1yr remaining) and were after a 95% LTV mortgage. The AIP was renewed before our offer.

By chance, the house we have had the offer accepted on was for sale with an estate agents that is a connected company of the building society.

The mortgage advisor employed by the estate agent has suggested that we submit the actual mortgage application with him - he says that as they're connected companies, he can access their systems and submit the application in the same way as if we went into branch. Hes confirmed there will be no additional fees, and everything will be identical as if we're in the building society branch.

I'm a bit uncertain and am unsure about which one to go with - clearly one will benefit from commission but if no difference in any other way, I'm partially minded to go with the estate agent mortgage broker, who at least may have an interest in ensuring the application goes through quickly and successfully?

ACG

The offer has been accepted now, so i dont think it really matters.

If it had been before the offer then i would say go via the bank as the advisor being in the estate agent could bebiased towards them. Now the offer has been accepted i would just say its down to personal preference - atleast if the broker is chasing everything up for you - you dont have to.

starbarboy

I thing the OP has an AIP from the mortgage company but is yet to submit a full application (correct me if I'm wrong!) therefore they could potentially still get the broker to submit the full application on their behalf.

It's a difficult one to answer as some brokers are better than others, however a good broker should be able to ensure that everything goes through as smoothly as possible - hopefully taking some of the legwork out of it for you. Therefore I'd probably advise going with the broker.

Best of luck and hope all goes well.

Stephen

welshwizard1927

starbarboy wrote: »

I thing the OP has an AIP from the mortgage company but is yet to submit a full application (correct me if I'm wrong!) therefore they could potentially still get the broker to submit the full application on their behalf.

It's a difficult one to answer as some brokers are better than others, however a good broker should be able to ensure that everything goes through as smoothly as possible - hopefully taking some of the legwork out of it for you. Therefore I'd probably advise going with the broker.

Best of luck and hope all goes well.

Stephen

Yes - you're right. It's a slightly unique situation as the mortgage company owns the estate agents that sell the house. So although the estate agent's broker is technically an all of the market, he claims to be able to access the mortgage company's products in the same way as we could in branch.

I'm half minded to go via the broker - simply because of the legwork and its the same product, and I'm hoping that if anything goes wrong, we have other options open to us. Afterall, its in the interests of the estate agent that completion is as quickly as possible. However, the uncertainty is because I've had confirmation that there shouldn't be an issue re my job from the branch - and don't want it to raise issues with the broker.