Moneyback mortgages - ethical?

homer_j_3

it is understandable why people feel we do not do a great deal because we do so much behind the scenes and sometimes knowledge and experience will help shave a bit of time off doing some cases but I cannot see how any broker could do everything from start to finish in less than an hour.

apk1

Probably flame the fire a little here but...............

£520 is not a bad sum for a mortgage if there is other business, for what would probably be 1.5-2 days work for a tricky case with 2 client (including all follow up and chasing) but the point nobody has mentioned is the amount of wasted time advisors have, i.e. lots of enquires, research, only for properties to fall through or clients to change their plans.

Don't get me wrong a good advisor will earn a good living, but will work hard for it (I tend to be on the PC from about 4:30/5:00am often till 8:00/9:00pm) and in my opinion should not need to charge a fee.

Rick62

Also don't expect your broker to be in any rush to help you next time you want his assistance if you cut him out.

I, as I'm sure many other broker do, will often spend a lot of time with clients on things that won't make me any money, or are very remote, eg, they're thinking about buying a holiday home, BTL, or their mother has a £20k mortgage and what should they do etc etc. I can do this for my clients on the basis I get the fee when they have real business, its all part of the service and is based on mutual trust and respect and an ongoing relationship.

Bit old fashioned I guess.

payless

opens up the arguement for true fee based advise.. where you pay an agreed fee for a particular service and recieve all the commission back. unfortunately the market ( or at least MSE) is anti fees as nit does not understand them - just read the articles and it obviously Martin just thinks fees means fees ontop of commission.

on some £500 cases I might be preapred to accept a net £250,( ie taking just half to cover my fee) whereas on others £500 does not justify the work involved, depends on work and whats the lender paying.

dixie_dean_2

My words..

SEEMS like a lot of money for not a lot of work

words put in my mouth by homerJ

the fact that you CLEARLY feel that £520 for arranging your mortgage is far too much money to earn.

Spot the difference?

As for the rest it mainly sounds like self-centred rubbish. Mortgage advisors don't save lives, they don't work in dangerous conditions and they don't make the world a better place. Don't give me sob stories about how hard you work and how unfair everything is. You all no doubt earn well above the national average for what I have found to be a very simple job utilising a few basic maths skills. I used to work as a travel agent for a round the world specialist and it was very annoying when people would come in and chat for 2-3 hours, get all the in formation they needed and then go somewhere else, or often the internet, to save £20. However, that's the way the system works, people want the best deal for them and I understood it. If you find it so abhorrent that I would even CONSIDER trying to get the best deal for myself than maybe you should change jobs to somewhere that charges up front. I believe McDonalds pay minimum wage.

As it is I found a better deal for myself and will almost certainly be using MBM. If any of you guys a really struggling with these interest rates give me a shout and I can probably loan you a few bob from the cashback.

terese

whatever money you save does add up !!!

dawsonio

I’ve just used Moneybackmortgages for my first mortgage but I used the many comparison sites to get inkling into the market and choose a mortgage myself.

My case was a tricky one with my wife not having ILR and my first application with Nationwide was rejected on that basis, but credit to MBM they called around the lenders and helped me get a deal that was equally as good as the Nationwide one. I really do recommend them and feel they deserve more than the 50% they will receive.

So if you want to spend your time doing your research then I would recommend MBM everytime but if you have already had advice from a broker I definitely think it is unethical to steal there advise and use it elsewhere.

I have spent many many hours researching the products before i was comfortable with choosing one myself, so even though it might take an adviser a lot less time to find a mortgage now they would have still had to put in the hours somewhere along the line.

homer_j_3

dixie_dean wrote: »

My words..

SEEMS like a lot of money for not a lot of work

words put in my mouth by homerJ


the fact that you CLEARLY feel that £520 for arranging your mortgage is far too much money to earn.

Spot the difference?

I cant spot the difference to be honest?

As for the rest it mainly sounds like self-centred rubbish. Mortgage advisors don't save lives, they don't work in dangerous conditions and they don't make the world a better place. Don't give me sob stories about how hard you work and how unfair everything is.

You putting words in our mouths now - has any one of us said that we do the above? I for one think that it is a financially rewarding area and does provide a good income.

You all no doubt earn well above the national average for what I have found to be a very simple job utilising a few basic maths skills. I used to work as a travel agent for a round the world specialist and it was very annoying when people would come in and chat for 2-3 hours, get all the in formation they needed and then go somewhere else, or often the internet, to save £20. However, that's the way the system works, people want the best deal for them and I understood it.

You are correct, it is just business that people will not always use our service and that they will see MBM or other similar sites. I have no issue with this fact or people using the site.

What I have a problem with is the percieved view that for a broker to receive 500 for a mortgage is scandalous when you have absolutely no idea about the job we do.

When you used your basic math skills to find your better deal it probably did seem quite easy because you know you.

You can't claim for negligence of your own advice. You don't have to anwer to anybody else if you failed to spot another deal that might have been more suitable.

I am actually suprised you haven't asked MBM for a bigger cut on the basis all they have to do is pay some hosting fees and an IT guy to watch the website. (Surely its not that simple is it?)

If you find it so abhorrent that I would even CONSIDER trying to get the best deal for myself than maybe you should change jobs to somewhere that charges up front. I believe McDonalds pay minimum wage.

As it is I found a better deal for myself and will almost certainly be using MBM. If any of you guys a really struggling with these interest rates give me a shout and I can probably loan you a few bob from the cashback.

Maybe the people who work at macdonalds earning minimum wage need your cashback saving more than us. Just a quick question - when do you start growing your own vegatables? You realised the local shopkeeper made a living, so went to the supermarket but now realise they make some money. It must be a tough world you live in.

MortgageMamma

there is no way of getting around the fact that what you are doing to the broker who advised you is an inexcusable abuse of trust and a waste of the poor mans time. If you think being a mortgage broker is just about being able to add up then that just shows how ignorant you are and how blissfully unaware you are of the complexities of the property market and its associated transactions. You are exactly what MBM is looking for, arrogant and self assured enough to try and arrange your own mortgage and tight fisted enough to value a small cashback in return for waiving your rights to recourse should you have been mis advised. Oh and you'll have to do your own paperwork. Brilliant.

MarkyMarkD

As almost everyone who's responded to dixie's ethical dilemma seems to be a broker, let me answer from a more independent perspective.

I think the fact that you, dixie, thought of asking the question proves that there is an ethical issue here. It's intriguing that in less than 4 hours you went from asking a fairly sensible ethical question to believing that brokers were the spawn of the devil and that anything you could do to rob them was no more than their type deserve.

I can't agree with your change of heart.

The overheads of operating in the financial services arena are significant. You can't simply run a mortgage brokerage from your spare bedroom with no costs, as you seem to believe. So the £520 the broker might have received from your mortgage arrangement isn't profit, and isn't equivalent to wages.

By the time any broker has paid regulatory costs, training costs, premises costs, travelling costs, whatever, AND allowed for the proportion of their borrowers who never get a mortgage because they either get rejected by the lender, simply change their mind, or decide to rip off their broker by going elsewhere, they are not earning an excessive amount.

And even if they WERE receiving an excessive amount, they are getting paid that by the lender, not the borrower, in most cases.

I have no objection to moneysaving. But if you want to buy your baked beans from ALDI, go to ALDI. Don't pop into Tesco, steal them off their shelves, and then smuggle them into ALDI so you can pay their lower till price.

If you think you need advice, get it from a broker and pay for it (or let the lender pay them for it).

If you don't think you need advice, go to a cashback broker.