Using an IFA for mortages

hieveryone

BigPun69 wrote: »

That sounds like a great recommendation! I actually just signed up because I'm desperately trying to find a good mortgage broker based on a recommendation.

Would you be happy to share her details so I can get in touch with her? Thanks

I would certainly be happy to, but not sure if you are in an area that is available to her? If you PM me and let me know where you are from :T

rafhelp

I simply emailed the ifa to ask for a breakdown of what his fees paid for, to be told I was being rude.

oh my, I was being polite as I could.

Madbags

rafhelp wrote: »

I simply emailed the ifa to ask for a breakdown of what his fees paid for, to be told I was being rude.

oh my, I was being polite as I could.

I thought the whole idea of posting on here was to clarify that point. Not that you don't have a right to know of course but you should have just spoke on the telephone or in person, often the emotion behind written words can be misinterpreted.

ACG

Personally I charge more than the broker you went to see does (unless its a large mortgage and easy case, in which case it may be less or even nothing).

I had 3-4 appointments yesterday. In one of them she was very concerned with the fee, why it was so much, when it was charged, why I charged it etc etc. Which I went though with her, that was £500 and in the end she was happy. It is her money shes spending so she (or anyone) needs to be on board with it as its not a small amount.

I went to another appointment later on where I was charging £750 and the clients never blinked an eye, I started to explain why I charged it and her words were "your in business, you need to make a wage, I know why you charge it".

Ultimately I charged it because the commission alone would not have been enough and neither were straight forward cases I could just send to whoever came out cheapest (unless we got very lucky).

But in any case they client needs to be happy. If they are not then personally I do not want the business as they are either going to delay paying, get into an argument about it or resent it. I dont want unhappy customers and none of those outcomes are good for me and my business.

On this thread (or any thread on this forum) I have never said people must use a broker. Its personal choice and there is usually more than one way to skin a cat. If you want the professional advice you usually have to pay for it, if you want the cheaper route then so be it. Many of my customers are people who have adverse or tried it themselves and were declined.

I always remember the case where a client applied to directly - it was declined. I applied to the same lender and it was accepted, to me that sums up the difference a broker can make.

londongirl

sorry to hijack thread , but can anyone tell me if there is any advantage to getting a mortgage broker who charges a fee as opposed to just comission based? Assumign they are both whole of the market.

Also - is one closer to home better, if need to drop things in, or speak face to face - or doesn't it really matter / dont need to do this kind of thing? I didn't have a choice of mortgage last time and so not done this before.

Thanks

dunstonh

sorry to hijack thread , but can anyone tell me if there is any advantage to getting a mortgage broker who charges a fee as opposed to just comission based? Assumign they are both whole of the market.

There are a number of charging methods. In low property value areas, the commission is not enough for brokers to offer service. So, they often supplement it with a relatively small fee. So, you get commission and fee together.

Some will be commission only as the higher house prices can allow that.
Some will be fee only where they rebate the commission (or offset it against the fee).

ACG

londongirl wrote: »

sorry to hijack thread , but can anyone tell me if there is any advantage to getting a mortgage broker who charges a fee as opposed to just comission based? Assumign they are both whole of the market.

Also - is one closer to home better, if need to drop things in, or speak face to face - or doesn't it really matter / dont need to do this kind of thing? I didn't have a choice of mortgage last time and so not done this before.

Thanks

I can only speak personally, but if I did fee free I would have to do a lot more applications. I charge what I consider to be a fair fee and in turn can afford to take on less cases. This leaves me more time to be around to keep on top of cases, resolve issues, answer questions etc.

As to whether local or not - personal preference I suppose. I have clients from Brighton up to Newcastle so it can be done over email/phone without any issues.

londongirl

Thank you both for your reply, that does help. My partner spoke to someone on the phone today who said the fee was only applicable if we went ahead with the mortgage through them but then in the paperwork they sent it seemed to be saying the fee would be paid anyway - probably its them we should be clarifying with but what would be normal?

D4nny

When we went for our first mortage just over a year ago as ftb's we initially used the mortage advisor/broker through the estate agent,all i can say was he was brilliant we ha a first meeting with him that lasted around 3hours he got to know us and got all the info he needed and we also got to know abit about him.we then had a second meeting with him that was a couple of hours and he got us a mortage deal that was iirc 3.5% over about 23years.
Unfortinatly the day we were going to sign the paper work leeds building socity pulled the deal,he tried a couple of other places but as both me and my partner have never had a loan or finance store cards ect he explained to us about he didnt want to keep credit checking for x amount of mortages as it could impact on us badly and for a couple of places our credit score wasnt high enough to get a mortage he held his hands up and suggested going to the natwest as what they were offering at the time was the same as the best deal he could get us now after bein accepted with natwest i rang him and explained everything and told him my concerns and he actually rang ip natwest on our behalf then got back intouch with us and was kind of a middle man explaining things to us in a more understandable (to us) way.
Eventually we went for the natwest mortage as we didnt want the house to go to somebody else but hebwas really brilliant and we didnt pay him a penny all i can say is when our fixed term is over i hope we can find a broker like him who seemed to care and have passion for his job/clients and we didnt even end up using him in the end.
That was just our opinion anyway.even tho we didnt use him i wouldnt of minded paying hom £500 for all the work he did for us.

rafhelp

Well we went with the free broker L&C reccomended by Reallymoving.com. After 2 hours interview and then waiting around for 4 days+ we were then told the same lender would only do a minimum of 20% deposit.

We went to another high street bank who said they could provide one for 5 to 10% so we made appointment for interview and took time off work for it. We went down and 2 hours later they said the same thing, which is min 20% deposit only. The main reason being that its a relatively new house being bought from the builder. Although we were told the house is owned by a housing agency.

I would have thought that a newer build house still under warranty would be a better investment and more attractive to a lender