Accord Mortgages

Bobbin_Up

Hi Everyone,

I have been lurking on this forum for the past week as my partner and I are stressing out about out mortgage application. We bought a house in 2010 and easily acquired a mortgage (through a broker) with Accord.

Our circumstances have changed (we now have a considerably larger income) and decided we wanted a larger house. Went back to our broker from last time and decided to re-apply to Accord as we are on a fixed and it doesn't come up for renewal until Feb 2014, so changing would incur a fine. So essentially we are applying for some sort of bolt-on (I'm not au fait with technical terms!). We sold our house, found and had an offer accepted on our dream home. Promptly sent off mortgage app around three weeks ago.

They reply within 5 days, need proof that we get our free childcare hours (our daughter recently turned three so nursery now far cheaper). This is promptly sent. Said we'd hear back. Broker has called every day, Accord promise we'd hear by the end of the day/ tomorrow. This has been two weeks of waiting on tenterhooks! Broker is unconcerned.

So I've been doing a bad thing- googling Accord and reading terrible reviews.....they string you out for weeks only to decline, and this was BEFORE the MMR changes came in. I've got the frighteners up me because there are so many awful reviews saying they are cowboys etc. I must say that as current customers we've never had a problem, but now I'm getting very tetchy- estate agents keep hassling us and I'm worried we will lose the house. Is it reasonable to set our own deadline, if we don't hear back then apply to another lender and incur the fine? Broker is telling us to calm down!

So sorry for the long post! Does anyone else have any views on Accord?

Thank you!

Paully232000

I can only speak from personal experience of having an accord mortgage for 6.5 years now, on two 5 year fixed rate mortgages, the last one started in october 2013.
We were not a straightforward case, children/childcare, partner on maternity and me on a fixed term contract. They did come back a few times to ask for extra information throughout the application, and we handed it to our broker and she passed it on.
All in all from application submission to approval was 30 days, which, at the time was the average time detailed on their website for approvals, so I couldnt really complain. I was a bit annoyed at the time of the asking for new information several times, which I thought could have been requested at the beginning, but on hindsight, and given the information that I have said that was on their website, it wasnt really that painful or unreasonable in my opinion.

You will hear negative reviews on here and elsewhere, but just think about how many applications that go through with a large company (who are not cowboys) and the tendency for people only to talk about a company when things go wrong. There rates are great, and worth the bit of hassle in my opinion, in the grand scheme of things, albeit there SVR is high so something to watch out for if you think your jobs/etc are not stable (but then who knows what will happen to anyone in say 5 years).
Hope you get it in the end, we did, and very happy.

Bobbin_Up

Thank you for your reply, Paully. I'm a teacher so my job should be considered secure. We've been opting for the 2 year fixed rate which suited us fine and we have been happy with that. Website says average is 17 days which does seem reasonable.

And of course you are write, people are far more likely to write bad reviews than good ones.

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

zonifer

We sent off our mortgage application (through a broker) and got an offer about 2 weeks later. Very straightforward...and so far so good.
Good luck.

Still

We were also concerned after reading reviews but our offer was through in less than two weeks!

The small amount of communication we've had with them so far has been great too!

Charlton_King

Our experience with Accord has been pretty good. Excellent customer service, generally.

We are having issues with them regarding extension of our current mortgage (i.e. taking out a new Accord product) beyond state retirement age - they don't seem to want to touch this with a barge pole despite 5x value/loan and a spotless repayment record over 7 years. However I gather they are scarcely alone in this attitude.

Looking like we're going to have to resort to some premium rate lender for a few years. Hey ho.