Renewing mortgage solo vs through an IFA

ACG

Product Transfer.

There is a bit more to it than you have described. We have to do the admin and compliance behind the scenes. All in you are probably talking 2-4 hours.

They would have been paid about £200 from Nationwide but from that they have to pay out their costs - insurance, compliance, regulatory costs, stationary etc.

You have paid for something you could have done yourself, but some people prefer to pay to not have to do it/worry about it.

koexelek

kingstreet wrote: »

We do the same.

A Nationwide PT the other day earned us £74.19.

Nationwide have never been the broker's friend.
Only offered us access to product transfers when they were absolutely forced to, then decided to only pay us half the going rate.
Also tried to dual price us out of business during the credit crunch.

JustAnotherSaver

ACG wrote: »

Product Transfer.

There is a bit more to it than you have described. We have to do the admin and compliance behind the scenes. All in you are probably talking 2-4 hours.

They would have been paid about £200 from Nationwide but from that they have to pay out their costs - insurance, compliance, regulatory costs, stationary etc.

You have paid for something you could have done yourself, but some people prefer to pay to not have to do it/worry about it.

Yeah i don't want anyone here thinking i'm coming here to complain about the financial advisors charge as i'm not. If it was really that bad and i was really that unhappy with it then i wouldn't pay it, simple. I don't expect free advice as we all need paying if we're putting in work.


I was coming here really to see if i could do it myself. To phrase that better - not so much to see if i could do it myself but to see if >>I<< could do it myself (next time round).




What gets me is the comparison side of things. The financial advisor had it all at his finger tips and has a computer system that allows him to view a fair comparison once other factors are broken down - such as various fees, cashback offers etc and it gives him a total cost at the end of the term comparison.


I don't have that.



So i could be viewing say £300pm with Nationwide & then jump over to Santander's website (for example) and see the same fixed term coming in at say £290 so on the face of it you'd think great it's cheaper, but when digging a bit deeper Nationwide may offer a cashback incentive and Santander may require you to get a solicitor involved since you're switching from one lender to them (i know one of the results that came in at a few quid cheaper than Nationwide the financial advisor said that there was a getting a solicitor requirement for something or other).


It's the being able to make a fair comparison that bothers me.

LRmortgage

That’s why you go to the broker and pay for his time, expertise and systems.

Ask yourself this, was £200 a good deal for you to save the hours of work you would have had to put in to get the same result.

ACG

I agree with LR, that software costs money. We outlay around £150 a month for the software we use.

There is nothing stopping you doing what we do, but it might take you longer.

I read something the other day, it was a tongue in cheek kind of story but it was basically along the lines of an steam engine stopped working, the company called out 10 companies and none of them could fix it. It was going to cost £200k to replace this engine, before they ordered a new one they called this bloke out charged £2,000 per hour. He tapped the engine in a couple of places and pulled out a hammer and hit the engine and it worked again.

The engine owner complained saying he is not paying £2k for someone to spend 5 minutes and hitting the engine. The bloke who repaired it said your not paying me for hitting the engine, you are paying me for knowing where to hit it.

Something like that anyway. I have probably got it a bit wrong but hopefully you get the sentiment from it.

JustAnotherSaver

ACG - yeah i get the message

LRmortgage wrote: »

Ask yourself this, was £200 a good deal for you to save the hours of work you would have had to put in to get the same result.

That depends really. I'm happy enough with the £200 and the fact the job is now done plus if anything went wrong as in their fault then i'm protected.



Before i got in touch with them i did a bit of looking around with the lack of knowledge that i had. I knew i wanted a fixed rate for starters and i had a look at Nationwide (existing lender) deals and i was 99.9% sure that i wanted to lock in on a 5 year deal so that was 2 main decisions pretty much made up already.


I got the interest rate & headed over on to other big name bank websites and Nationwide was coming back cheaper. It wasn't really a contest.


I just wondered if there was [something] [somewhere] that i hadn't looked at because i didn't know where to look or if the advisor we go to had some sort of special advisor deal through a bank for example so that's another reason we went to the advisor.


It didn't actually take me long to check those rates. Minutes, not hours. I could've settled at the end of it & gone with the existing lender (which obviously i've done anyway) but as i forever doubt myself i carried on.