First time buyer questions.

highjewelgreen

Hi everyone,

We are finally in a position to be applying for our first mortgage and I have a lot of questions/worries buzzing around in my brain. I'd love some advice, here are my (probably silly) questions:

• Should we use a broker? I'm happy to do lots of leg work myself.
  
• We have looked at lots of banks and they seem to be running lots of offers, do you just apply for one mortgage? Or can you go through the process with several and see who has the best offer? Will multipule applications affect our credit rating?
  
• How much money should we put aside for move / legal / anything we haven't thought of costs?
  
  How long would you expect a mortgage application to take?
  
  Thanks in advance.

amnblog

Do you understand enough to handle this without a broker without making a mistake?

Baby_Angel

highjewelgreen wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We are finally in a position to be applying for our first mortgage and I have a lot of questions/worries buzzing around in my brain. I'd love some advice, here are my (probably silly) questions:

• Should we use a broker? I'm happy to do lots of leg work myself.
  
• We have looked at lots of banks and they seem to be running lots of offers, do you just apply for one mortgage? Or can you go through the process with several and see who has the best offer? Will multipule applications affect our credit rating?
  
• How much money should we put aside for move / legal / anything we haven't thought of costs?
  
  How long would you expect a mortgage application to take?
  
  Thanks in advance.

We were first time buyers too about 18 months ago. Even after speaking to a few banks directly we were nowhere near making a decision. Way too much information to absorb. Brokers surely have the knowledge of how each bank/building society operates, simply because of their experience doing this every day. We went through a broker and she made it all seem so simple. Even then I actually called up 2 other brokers to see if they had a deal that would be better than what she offered. She made sure we sent in the correct documents to the correct person at the correct time until the completion date. As FTB I didn't even know when to contact the solicitors or when the home insurance had to be ready. She always gave a heads up of what was going to happen the next week.

She didn't even charge us for the service. Of course the lender paid her through commission. From our experience I would say go with one if you are new to all this house buying stuff.

STG_2015

I'd use a broker, I'm a FTB and our broker had so much knowledge and has advised us throughout, its stressful with a broker I'd hate to think what it would be like without

highjewelgreen

Wonderful, thank you. I'm all for taking some of the stress out of it. Could I be cheeky and ask what a broker would cost roughly?

amnblog

zero to £999 depending on what you need them to do and how they work.


Each should tell you what they charge before you incur any cost.