Make an offer with no mortgage?

looknohands

I've spoken to a broker who has advised me not to get an agreement in principle until we've found the property we want. The broker has all of our documents , bank statements, earnings, my accounts and self assessment docs, passports copies, utility bills and we've filled out an assessment of our outgoings. The broker knows our deposit, which is now even higher. The broker has given us quite a modest top end budget compared to what some other brokers had estimates.

Is this advisable? we've been told to call up as soon as we make the offer and the broker will speak to the estate agent. We have been looking for over three months so I think we would've expired any AIP we'd had in the first instance which I believe results in a credit check? So it seems broker was right in that sense but is this an unusual thing to do?

Senior_Paper_Monitor

Your broker is 100% correct in my view (we only DIP cases earlier if concerned about their credit acceptability - presumably he also has your credit reports ?)

looknohands

Yes sorry forgot to mention that, broker has credit report, both mine and gfs but only from one agency, broker seemed happy with them. That's good I read a lot that you must have an AIP on sites like rightmove and I have heard some estate agents need to 'check funds are in place' before they accept an offer, I assume she will contact them and convinve them we are good for it.

Lungboy

It seems that some people advise getting the MIP, some the opposite. Halifax do a MIP online that doesn't involve a hard credit search so there's really no reason not to get it.

fairyloveheart

All our MIP were fine, and then our mortgage got referred as they didn't do that hard checks for the MIP so I wouldn't bother!

looknohands

Thanks, I am using the broker as don't have much time / knowledge to submit applications myself, just wondered if this was normal practice, broker had suggested Nationwide for our mortgage a month ago however also suggested to wait until offer as things might change. We don't pay broker until completion.

Lungboy

Halifax online MIP took us less than 10 minutes with the relevant paperwork to hand, and got an instant decision.

looknohands

Thanks Lungboy, Broker told me better deals were currently with Nationwide when I spoke to her (I bank with Halifax). Anyone know if you can get an AIP without a credit check from Nationwide? I've been looking for 3 months already and who knows could be another 3 months so don't want to credit check too much as we have only 10% deposit.

muhandis

Unfortunately not, Nationwide does a hard credit search for an AIP.

looknohands wrote: »

Thanks Lungboy, Broker told me better deals were currently with Nationwide when I spoke to her (I bank with Halifax). Anyone know if you can get an AIP without a credit check from Nationwide? I've been looking for 3 months already and who knows could be another 3 months so don't want to credit check too much as we have only 10% deposit.

GoldenShadow

Sounds sensible enough.

We didn't offer without an AIP because property moves so fast here and most agents wont put your offer forward without one. But saying that, it took about five minutes for my broker to do so if you like somewhere they can probably get it sorted nice and quick.

[Deleted User]

We got an AIP before looking for places as like the poster above, property moves so fast where we live that offers without an AIP are not considered. It may only take 10 mins to do an AIP, but with us generally looking at property in evenings and at weekends when our broker doesn't work, it wouldn't have been wise to assume he'd be able to do an AIP for us at a moments notice. It depends on what the market is like where you live I'd imagine.