Mortgage Advisor Fees

Housebuy12345

I was recommended a MA and her fees were £1890 but £850 cash back (cash that you don’t ever pay) so around £1k.

I don’t mind paying some money for someone to arrange the mortgage but £1k sounds like a lot.

I would prefer to go with a mortgage broker as I have no credit history and self employed, but I also don’t want to be ripped of.

LRmortgage

How much is your mortgage? Sounds like they are charging you a % fixed fee and then refunding the commission they earn from the lender.

£1k is on the high side, but it’s not the highest I’ve heard! I think £500 is more or less the average we charge and I would guess is similar to a lot of other brokers.

But, it depends how complex your case is, it could be that this broker is worth every penny!

ACG

Assuming no bad credit, our fee would be £500. As LR says, that is fairly common. Our maximum fee is £1250 but for that, you would need to have very bad and very recent bad credit.

There are brokers who do not charge any fees and brokers who will charge in excess of £2k. It can vary, my one bit of advice would be to not pay any fees until you have at least a mortgage offer.

amnblog

A quick survey of the market shows that the bulk of Brokers will charge fees and most are in the £300 to £600 range.

As with most things it is about value for money.

You need to be getting something pretty special to pay four figures for a case that does not sound too tricky.

Mortgage_Adviser

You can use MSE hightly commended London and Country, who are free.


Just remember that you get what you pay for.

Housebuy12345

I’ve only been back in the country for two years but I’ve kept my bank account open. I’ve been working for two year and 18 months as self employed (6 months PAYE).

No bad credit, but no good credit either.

I’ve saved about £25k and the house will be about <£125k

I just can’t justify £1k, especially as it could potentially be a two year mortgage.

foxy-stoat

Housebuy12345 wrote: »

I just can’t justify £1k, especially as it could potentially be a two year mortgage.

Dont use them then, try to go to the high street lenders and see how you go. Just remember you wont know who to go to and what criteria each one has, if you make more than 2 or 3 full applications you will need to wait for 6 months before applying again.

Shame there isn't a knowledge base of financial advisers, who will charge a proportion of the purchase price for advice to buy the most expensive item in your life, who will know the best lender to place a mortgage for you individual circumstances......

ACG

A lot of lenders do need a 3 year UK address history, you may find it becomes a bit of a stumbling block with some lenders. But I agree with you, £1k for what should be a relatively straight forward case if you get the right lender seems a little OTT.

Bollo2019

I've had my mortgage broker doing a load of running around, chasing stuff up and has been worth every penny of the £200 fee.

Mortgage_Adviser

As a broker I agree that that the UK broker fees are not low.

Unfortunately this is due to the fact that about 80% of the clients are a time wasters who ask you to look at the various scenarios and spend a lot of your time only to do nothing at the end.
If the brokers were able to charge for time it would make it much cheaper for people who are serious about doing business as they would not have to subsidise the enquierers.


I don't at all mind having a 10 minute or so telephone char with the customers for free but it is very frustrating when you are self employed and spend days on research only for the client to change his mind about buying the property or never actually finding one.

ACG

80% are timewasters? That can not be right.

I have just done a quick calculation based on our enquiries in 2018 and it looks like we lost 18% give or take. I am fairly confident at least a few of those will come back this year - it was more a case of the time was not right for them last year (adverse, waiting on pay rises or to clear debt, unable to find a property in budget etc).

If you are losing 80% of cases where you go to do research or even 80% of enquiries, I think you should probably be looking a little closer to home rather than assume it is the customers. There has to be a reason 8 in 10 are not moving forward.