Habito Discussion

lesuttle

I'm in the middle of using Habito for my first ever house purchase, and can't recommend them enough.

Not only has their service been super fast, their online chat feature has meant I can fire them any and every (and I mean every!) question that springs to mind about mortgage applications/terms/timeframes etc. They've been nothing short of amazingly friendly and helpful.

We got a mortgage in principle document from them within about 30mins of making an account and once the offer on our house was accepted, we messaged them straight away (late in the day on a Friday) We sent all our supporting documents on the Monday and by Tuesday had confirmation that everything had been sent to our Mortgage provider.

Truly excellent in my opinion!

Enobarbus3

It took ages to enter many many very detailed personal financial details. I was then put on hold in their chat room. After 10 mins I suggested that we speak. I was called. The man did not have a clue. He claimed that he had no knowledge of facts which I had entered on their forms and which were pertinent to my application. He then asked me about them later. He did not understand what he was doing, at all. After testing him with a few basic questions, which he could neither answer no I think understand I terminated my application. I asked for my data to be deleted but I have no doubt it will not be,.
DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY

Perhaps

I'm having a go with Habito, mostly because there aren't any local brokers and Habito offer Topcashback.

Relatively simple - FTB, FT employed (+non-working partner), ~60% LTV, towards the upper end of affordability but flexible on loan amount. Habito were keen to 'recommend the mortgage for me', even though I started out by saying I didn't know what kind of mortgage I wanted.

In the meantime I did my own spreadsheet, poked the numbers around (based on the MSE/Mortgage Brain tables), and decided that I wanted a 2 year fix. Absolutely bog standard.

But it turns out the cheapest mortgage, once fees are taken into consideration, is one from Clydesdale, for whom Habito exclude because: "Based on what you told us, we think this lender’s service isn’t up to the standards you’re looking for." I said no such thing. When pressed, the agent said:

"Due to the small difference in cost, Natwest offer a much more reliable and speedier service. They also have better service in the future if you need to make application changes or remortgage. If Clydesdale were much cheaper I would have said it was worth the process being a little longer but for such a small difference in cost, Natwest have the best option."

which smells a bit like 'and Natwest will pay us a commission'. But maybe that's just me being cynical.

Kinda wondering how much hassle it is to go direct, since they haven't added any value thus far?

kingstreet

Of course NatWest will pay them a commission. How could they offer a fee-free service otherwise?

According to my chart, NatWest rate is 0.37% and Clydesdale is 0.38% so no bias there...?

Surely the question here is, is the rate difference worth the potential aggro of waiting for Clydesdale.

FWIW I agree with Habito on this but if service speed is not important to you I don't see how they can justify it as an issue in recommending a lender/product.

ACG

Have to agree with Kingstreet, in terms of income it will be negligible.
In terms of ease it will likely be tons easier with Natwest.

But rather than trying to get it through without telling you they should be discussing it with you and explaining it.

shopaholicnumber1

I used Habito for my purchase in March this year and had no problems with them at all. I still had a default on my account (although this fell off in May so probably didn't have much impact) but was concerned about affordability and credit history and was expecting a specialist lender to be offered, but they offered High Street bank right away and everything went through without any issues. Communication was fine, all queries answered quickly and no surprises along the way. I guess it's slightly "luck of the draw" who is allocated your case, but I would use them again without worry.

zesh90x

It's hit and miss with Habito/Trussle, i started using them, and kept getting generic requests for additional documentation or asking for clarification, but felt like any questions i had myself were being ignored completely, or not paid any attention too.

Decided to withdraw from using them, and went with a proper broker instead, was a 110% better for me that way, however i was going for 90% LTV, so i can imagine people applying at a 60% LTV may have a better time....

[Deleted User]

My personal story - I went to L&C, Habito and Trussle yesterday.

L&C as soon as I ticked the adverse box it said thanks but no thanks.

Habito were friendly and I got to speak to a human on the chat thing - but they told me I need to "build my credit score" and/or go with a specialist lender.

When I queried if they could place with lenders that don't credit score (and I even named one!), they just said no, "not on the list" - which makes me wonder what exactly their "list" is as they're a fairly well known manual underwriting lender!

Trussle it's been referred to someone who's asked for my full credit report (fair enough).


The Habito one was the most surprising of the 3. They let me speak to a human, but the human didn't even try (e.g. speaking to BDMs at said B/S) to see what was out there.

Lending policy there says 3 years discharged and I'm 4 discharged - for them to bat it away does make me wonder how much work they'll actually put in on the slightly more complex/unusual cases.

I appreciate some is on volume - and a £100k shared ownership mortgage won't bring in mega bucks - but do these people not rely on word of mouth? I work in the industry so I'd think it would be a pretty straightforward case once a lender says "OK, we'll have a look" - I won't be faffing around with the wrong documents or taking weeks etc. like some clients!

If it's easy, I'd go for someone like Trussle all day long (cashback on TopCashback too!!) - but anything slightly out of the ordinary or if you need your hand holding I would go to a 'local' broker

jashdown

I’m far into the process with Habito and no complaints so far. Been simple to engage with them, document uploads are simple and their recommendations are sound. I work for the biggest lender in the UK and understand the market. They provide their advice based on that market and what is the best way forward based on overall initial term cost and their clients speed to action requirements. As I said I cannot fault them so far

Perhaps

After a couple of wasted weeks, I've given up with Habito. Avoid.

All the much-vaunted 'technology' makes it worse. Once their fact-find questions are submitted they become locked and you can neither edit nor see the answers. Unfortunately I partially filled in some questions and pressed 'save'. It then wouldn't let me go in and fill in the others. In another place I uploaded some documents but didn't save them (I changed my mind about what to provide) - that section now is just a blank space saying 'something went wrong' (repeatably, refreshing it many times over a week).

This would be manageable, except the agent on online chat is utterly useless. I point out the website is not functioning, I don't get an answer for days, and then they just ask me to do the thing I complained I couldn't do. It can take 3 days to get a reply to the most basic point, even if the system says the agent has seen my live-chat message.

It feels like they're having a hundred different conversations at once and can't remember what been said in each of them, and can't be bothered to go back and read the history.

Now going with Trussle, who have gone from start to application in less than a week (thus far). They appear to have actual humans you can speak to, although the interface isn't great either - you can send an email or a website message, but it doesn't seen attached to your particular case so presumably somebody's job is to figure out which customer the email comes from. Also, while I have the human's direct phone number and she called me, I've not actually managed to speak to anything but voicemail thus far when I've called with questions. We'll see how this goes...