How do these lenders stack up?

JakeW

Hello all,

I'm soon hoping to get my first mortgage and intend to get a broker, but want to be a little prepared before diving in. I'm trying to evaluate some lenders who I think are a good fit for me. I'm especially interested in:

• How many months bank statements they typically require
• X salary they typically lend up to
• Affordability (how picky?)
• How long their offers will last

The lenders I'm currently looking at are:

Tesco, Halifax, Virgin Money, Santander, and Woolwich/Barclays.

Any info or experience would be welcome,

Thank you all,

J

amnblog

That's like booking a service for your car and then trying to find a copy of the workshop manual.

Leave it for your broker.

RickyC_IFSWP

This is what you pay your broker to do.

What you can do in preparation though is to help your broker recommend the best one for you: think about the term of the mortgage, the type of mortgage, fixed or variable rate, term of deal (e.g. 1,2,3 5 years) etc.

Think about the bigger picture and the broker will help on the finer details.

brooklyn07

IME from the past week!

Woolwich will promise you the earth on their online affordability calculator but when you get to DIP will only offer you 4 times your income if you have a 10% deposit and 5.5 times your income with a 15% deposit.

Halifax seem to be the most lenient and will lend me above and beyond what i need with a 10% deposit although the interest rates seem to be a lot higher than other lenders,

ACG

brooklyn07 wrote: »

IME from the past week!

Woolwich will promise you the earth on their online affordability calculator but when you get to DIP will only offer you 4 times your income if you have a 10% deposit and 5.5 times your income with a 15% deposit.

This isnt quite wrong, but it is far from correct.

They cap their lending with income multiples (although affordability is assessed initially), but those income multiples vary depending on the LTV & your income - so it could be the figures you were offered were more or less than what is available to others.

davegriff

Virgin are slow but seem to be easy to deal with in my experience lately, took 8 weeks for my offer, just waiting on solicitor doing her bits

suziqqq

Application to offer in just over 3 weeks with Halifax only 1 payslip and no bank statement needed expires in 4 months from offer date

JakeW

Thanks for the comments,

Yep I realise this should be the brokers job but it helps me get an idea of what's realistic in terms of properties.

I'm aiming for 30% LTV, so Woolwich might be a good move for me based on your comments brooklyn07.

Interesting that Halifax was mentioned as lenient, I tried their affordability calculator and found it offered much less than Woolwich and the others I mentioned. Mind you, the Halifax calculator is rather basic and not split into criteria like travel, food etc so maybe i'm using it wrong.

Thanks so far everyone!

Daisy_bee

davegriff wrote: »

Virgin are slow but seem to be easy to deal with in my experience lately, took 8 weeks for my offer, just waiting on solicitor doing her bits

Currently in the process of getting a mortgage with Virgin and I was told up to 20 days . 8 weeks seems a longtime - any particular reason for the delay if you don't mind me asking?

davegriff

We'll they kept asking for more payslips and bank statements , my broker said every time you send more info you get pushed back on the que , he spoke to the business manager in the end and my offer was given the next day, plus I seemed too hit all the bank holiday weekends

Daisy_bee

Thanks for the info - have my valuation booked for this week and have provided all the docs they asked for. They have booked at the ap and said the only thing they require is the valuation- guess they could still ask for more docs after valuation though?