Cheery's country living adventure

Karmacat

Wow, Cheery, happy birthday for yesterday!  I took a day off from the interwebulator, and look what happened in CheeryWorld!  Sounds wonderful, and your neighbours and your chickens sound wonderful too.

greent

Love the idea of chickens pecking at a xylophone! 🐓🎶🎵💜💙🧡💛

Cheery_Daff

They're not very good at it 😂😂 There are videos of other people's chickens ignoring xylophones on YouTube if you want to waste 10 minutes 😂😂

Yesterday was cheerful. Productive day at work, then we went for an impromptu cuppa in a friend's garden on the way to the supermarket, most jolly! 

In for a slightly less cheery day at work today but the sun's shining and I don't have any meetings so we might sneak out for a cuppa at some point.

Not impressed with the Happy Wheel at the minute. On quite a downswing - as of yesterday I was £91 down for the month, and today isn't looking great so far 😮😮 I switched to slightly higher spin sizes as an experiment to get through it more quickly so more variance is inevitable but... ouch 😮

Going to give it next month as well though, and then go back to smaller spins, will see how I feel (and if it's started going up again!)

rtandon27

🤣🤣🤣  Work does get in the way of Cheery Days doesn't it?!?  I'm envious of your outdoor coffee and cake dates 😉  They sound just delightful!

I've thankfully got only one meeting today, with my manager, but he is such a joy to work with it's not a hardship!  As long as I show up to the meeting fully caffeinated, he's a happy camper and as long as he parks the grumbles at the door I'm happy.  Simplicity is sometimes the best way to a fruitful meeting.  (We won't speak about all the other horrid meetings I've been in this week, those are best left undisturbed!)

Cheery, may I ask you to remind me of your experience with a mortgage broker?  I have one offering his services to me & I'm blissfully naive to the whole process.  Growing up is hard - LOL

PS - I just realized how the phrase offering services sounds... Be kind ladies - LOL

Karmacat

rtandon27 said:

🤣🤣🤣  Work does get in the way of Cheery Days doesn't it?!?  I'm envious of your outdoor coffee and cake dates 😉  They sound just delightful!

I've thankfully got only one meeting today, with my manager, but he is such a joy to work with it's not a hardship!  As long as I show up to the meeting fully caffeinated, he's a happy camper and as long as he parks the grumbles at the door I'm happy.  Simplicity is sometimes the best way to a fruitful meeting.  (We won't speak about all the other horrid meetings I've been in this week, those are best left undisturbed!)

Cheery, may I ask you to remind me of your experience with a mortgage broker?  I have one offering his services to me & I'm blissfully naive to the whole process.  Growing up is hard - LOL

PS - I just realized how the phrase offering services sounds... Be kind ladies - LOL

We need Paul Merton or someone in here to make the most of that 🤣🤣🤣 

As far as a mortgage broker's genuine duties are concerned  I think SL used one to get her insurance, I remember something about the thatch causing horrendous increases in the quotes. 

 As for me, I'm in absolute awe of anyone who manages regular phone video calls - I have a terrible habit of pulling my hair about as if I'm sculpting, and I look an *incredible* mess when I come off even an ordinary phone call 🤣.  Life, eh!

Cheery_Daff

Ha! 😂 I will assume he is offering nothing more than mortgage brokering services 😁

I'd never used one before either... This was a recommendation from a friend, they were a relatively local firm with a small number of decent reviews. Went to visit, seemed nice, took info. No upfront fee - got commission from sale. 

We went with a broker as I'd not applied for mortgage before, also our age difference meant we needed somewhere that would go beyond retirement age. 

Got an agreement in principle, and then found a house that went right up to the limit. 

He found us somewhere that would lend into retirement, up to our limit. They had a max of 10 acres which I queried, and he said wouldn't be a problem. (Sorry, this is rambly,  I'm on the phone and can't edit easily)

I was due a nationally agreed payrise in a couple of months- he'd put this amount on the forms saying it would be fine, but the building society rejected it, so we had to use my actual wage which reduced the amount we could borrow. He also neglected to put my student loan on the forms - I'd told him and it was on all my wage slips - this meant we were then rejected by the bank on affordability criteria, and he never once returned my calls asking about whether I should pay it off or try elsewhere. 

The building society T&Cs said they wouldn't lend on over 10 acres, which I queried at the start (we were buying 11) and he said it would be fine. Obviously it wasn't fine, and the house was valued at £0. Yet again he wouldn't answer the phone or return calls, his receptionist was nice but couldn't do anything, solicitor said it was up to broker to negotiate with bank but in the absence of any help I got the title, took off one field, and got the solicitor to split titles, then sent that to the building society myself. 

Once I'd done that, and paid off my student loan (who knows if that was even necessary, but it there was only about £4k left at that point), the whole thing had taken so long my payrise had finally arrived anyway, and we were finally able to get the amount we wanted at the start, which was just under £215k (about 45% LTV, so not exactly a massive risk for them!)

The whole thing was stressful and tedious, and after that initial meeting I never had a single phone call or email with the broker himself, I just had to keep ringing his office and they told me he'd ring back, which he literally never did. 

Except for about a month before the mortgage fix ended, when he personally called to see if he could find us a new fix 😂😂 I told him I assumed he'd died 🙄😂 and that i was perfectly capable of sorting out my own fix, and I thought he'd behaved dreadfully 😂 Possibly the only time in my life I was actually on the ball enough to tell someone exactly what I thought of them.

So I'm not entirely sure that will help you 😂 I suppose it was successful in that we did eventually get a mortgage, but it took over 3 months,and involved a LOT of stress and running around on my part.

I think next time, knowing what I know now that we'd need to look for (eg lending into retirement etc) I'd be tempted to go direct. But I imagine a good broker would be worth it! I'd certainly look for somewhere with more reviews, and I'd want an assurance about communication before we signed up. 

Anyway, blah blah. Hope you can make a decent decision! Is this a remortgage or are you moving??

rtandon27

Wow Cheery!  Thank-you so much for the narrative, it was so kind of you to respond so quickly!  I've picked up some lovely pointers and my gut reaction of being wary of 'services' offered still stands.  I will listen to what he has to say, as I can be slightly naive to how things work in the UK as most of my financial experience was of course across the pond!

There is thankfully no urgency to the move, but yes 'we' will be buying.  Or rather I'll be buying, as there are some rather complicated life issues that make it seriously unwise for us to buy together.  This will be a first time buyer mortgage for me, as in the past I've either lived in family owned property (rent free) or in privately owned rental properties.  Though we adore living in the middle of nowhere, especially over the past pandemic year, the property owner has decided to request a rental increase that is beyond what I think is reasonable and means we have now hit my 'self-imposed' threshold.  It will now be more affordable to 'pay myself' rather than pay the landlord.

The subject of mortgage broker came up when we called the estate agent for a viewing of the house.  They asked if we would like to speak to one, and I agreed even though I've already done the legwork myself, and was ready to hit the button on an agreement in principle.  My thinking is that even a small saving on interest will make 'mortgage free' a reality!

Karmacat

How exciting, RT!  I didn't think you'd ever buy on this side of t'pond.  

Cheery_Daff

Ooh,exciting! Good to listen to what he has to say, although I'd be wary of going with a broker offered by estate agent - I'm not sure what the implications are but people on the house buying section of MSE always advise against it..  Incidentally it's well worth doing some reading in there about processes if you're unsure. MSE guide was super helpful for me too, having never done it before 😊

Baileys_Babe

I'm with @Cheery_Daff id  be wary of using a broker connected to an estate agent.