Choosing Mortgage Broker

khanji17

Hi All,
What is the best way to choose a mortgage broker and best time to look for one. I am also not too sure what is the difference between a broker, advisor etc.
What kind of things to look out for when choosing one? We will be buying a new house and selling our first home, can they deal with both the transactions? Do they have to be local to the area or can be anywhere in the UK? Finally, are there any recommendations?
Many Thanks

haras_n0sirrah

Hi
A broker and advisor are the same thing. You are looking for a whole of market broker rather than someone tied to a small panel. Some brokers are free but dont expect your hand held or much time given to you or if you want a more personal service expect to pay a modest fee as then the broker can take on less customers and give you more attention. Many excellent mortgage brokers post here. Why not read the boards and PM someone who you feel gives good advice. We are not allowed to approach people but posters are able to approach us. You can ask to see reviews to see what you may be getting. The best time is to speak to someone before accepting an offer on your house so that you can understand how much you can borrow. The post covid world is very different to before and lenders published criteria and their covid criteria is not the same thing. 

ACG

Mortgage Broker/Adviser/Consultant - all the same thing.
You can use a broker anywhere, we have customers from the Brighton to Aberdeen for example, but some brokers will only work local. I have a friend who wont work with people he has not met. Although I think he relaxed that a little with the recent lockdown. 

As haras has said, you are really looking for whole of market, but chances are you are not going to come across a broker who works from a panel as its unlikely any would admit to it. Whole of market also has different meanings, for some companies it is about 15 lenders spread across the market, for others it can be 80+ lenders. We have access to at least 70, could be more now, but in reality, last year we used about 15 lenders, this year we have used about 8 so far. 

Fee free/fee charging, I have nothing against fee free brokers but if you want a broker to take everything on for you then you are probably going to need to pay a fee. If we went fee free we would need to take on about 80% more customers to earn the same income as we do now, we could obviously not keep the same level of service if we had to do twice the amount of work.

Other than that, just have a chat with the broker and see how you get on with them and if you feel comfortable with that they are saying. 

onthemend88

We needed a whole of market broker who dealt with adverse and HTB so we made a list of several companies with good reviews who met this criteria and then met with some of the mortgage brokers before making our  decision. Every broker we spoke to charged a fee and were all roughly around the same price (£150). 

We just 'clicked' with the broker we chose and it paid off. She has been fantastic from start to finish and was even sending us updates on her days off. There was one minor blip with keying my DOB slightly wrong on our mortgage application but that was resolved within 24 hours and to be honest, anyone could have made that mistake. You need to be able to feel you can trust them as buying a house is a life changing (and stressful) process and it is nice to be able to have someone at the end of a phone call/email that can reassure you. 

Definitely speak to a few before making your decision. 

bethjames5681

It will probably be scorned at by others but we used Habito for our recent remortgage and would highly recommend. So easy and seamless, with great communications.

ACG

bethjames5681 said:

It will probably be scorned at by others but we used Habito for our recent remortgage and would highly recommend. So easy and seamless, with great communications.

I have nothing against habito, but a straight forward remortgage is a little different to a purchase. Stress levels tend to be higher, there is more chance of things going wrong and they are clearly not going to be getting involved in dealing with agents or solicitors with them being online. 

MovingForwards

I had previously popped in to speak with one and felt they were judgemental rather than understanding my situation. I didn't know anyone who had obtained a mortgage having similar circumstances to me.

Upon joining MSE I noticed several brokers would post, one specifically dealt with my type of situation and I liked how he spoke with people here. I then read through his posts and took a punt at posting my circumstances and crossed everything that he would reply. He did and I then had my broker; I also read various reviews once I knew his company name. It was probably about a year (could have been longer!) I had him before being in a position to realistically apply for a mortgage (my fault for leaving a job 😂), but we kept in touch throughout that time and when everything was ready he got me a DIP. I've been sitting in my home for about 7 weeks now. I've a broker for life and have happily recommended him quite a few times.

Your options are
--speak with friends and family to see who they have used within the last couple of years.
--Search for brokers and then find every review possible across various platforms.
--Pick a broker from here.