Mortgage broker - ask me anything

haras_n0sirrah

Thought I would start a thread where people can ask the brokers opinion on things @ACG @LRmortgage @kingstreet @Deleted_User (any other brokers want to chip in - these were the main other brokers who came to mind.
It is definately an interesting market - probably the busiest I have ever been but at the same time lenders are sooo slow. 
Anyone got a question? Ask away

Carl2510

Do you guys get paid better if you get paid by the lender or buy the client paying upfront sorry if this is a personal question, my current MA gets paid for by lender and he does a really good job for me I’ve used him for remortgage and now my next property purchase.

Wales2020

If the property we want to buy has been undervalued by mortgage surveyor what happens? Will they decline us completely or will they issue an offer for a revised amount? (Nationwide) thank you 

haras_n0sirrah

I charge a fee on offer and also get paid from the lender (fee typically £399) As a lot of what I do is shared ownership the commissions on those are tiny. If I was commission only I wouldn't be able to stay in business
It also means we can take less clients on and give a better service. The issue with a lot of the large brokers e.g. london and country is their business model is stack them high as the only way they can turn a profit is to write lots and lots of mortgages and service inevitably suffers. Easy cases will get a decent service if someone answers the phone, harder cases will get ignored or told they cannot be helped. A large number of the people who are contacting me through here have first tried l&c and given up. We will help anyone who wants it no matter how small the mortgage or how complex. 

haras_n0sirrah

Wales2020 said:

If the property we want to buy has been undervalued by mortgage surveyor what happens? Will they decline us completely or will they issue an offer for a revised amount? (Nationwide) thank you 

It would be a case of producing comparables to the surveyor. I got one turned around last week but it is difficult to do as it is getting the surveyor to admit they are wrong. Usually it would be a case of also trying to get the vendor to reduce the price. If you are still happy to pay the higher amount then it may affect your loan to value (so you may be able to still proceed as planned but on an 85% rate rather than a 75% rate for example)

Natsplus

I am planning to get a joint mortgage with my oh, where I earn 30% and he earns 70% of our total earnings. I would like to know, would the mortgage company looks at my personal accounts or the accounts of my limited company (bank statements) for making the decision in mortgage offer? 
My concern is, we were revamping and making some major changes in the last few months and the transactions were  limited in the last few months. This wasn't due to covid and we haven't been impacted but it was planned already.
How will this lack of business in the past few months affect my mortgage application?

haras_n0sirrah

Natsplus said:

I am planning to get a joint mortgage with my oh, where I earn 30% and he earns 70% of our total earnings. I would like to know, would the mortgage company looks at my personal accounts or the accounts of my limited company (bank statements) for making the decision in mortgage offer? 
My concern is, we were revamping and making some major changes in the last few months and the transactions were  limited in the last few months. This wasn't due to covid and we haven't been impacted but it was planned already.
How will this lack of business in the past few months affect my mortgage application?

Self employed at the moment is tricky. Lenders will generally want 3 months business bank statements to show income and will want to know how your turnover has been affected by Covid. Pre covid you would have got away with it as lenders weren't asking for business bank statements but now they will definately want them. Is it affordable with your partners income being used and you being a non earning partner? Alternatively when will you be back earning again - you may need to wait to show your business is back up and running

peppapig14

are you experiencing 100% complete delays with Nationwide ( delays fully documented on other threads) or are there any positive Nationwide timelines?

cooky123

Wales2020 said:

If the property we want to buy has been undervalued by mortgage surveyor what happens? Will they decline us completely or will they issue an offer for a revised amount? (Nationwide) thank you 

Mine was undervalued by 20k and the seller wouldn’t drop the price so we done a change of property form with our lender you can always do that if they will not agree the down value. 

haras_n0sirrah

peppapig14 said:

are you experiencing 100% complete delays with Nationwide ( delays fully documented on other threads) or are there any positive Nationwide timelines?

I had a nationwide case offer today to my complete surprise which went in on the 5th sept (lender looked at payslips and bank statements so not a no document case) but have had another one from last month which has not offered despite no questions (90%) Currently nationwide are at 19 working days. 
I suspect there are higher ltv tracks and lower ltv tracks (the one that offered today was under 75%)
I know self employed have their own track as well.

ACG

Carl2510 said:

Do you guys get paid better if you get paid by the lender or buy the client paying upfront sorry if this is a personal question, my current MA gets paid for by lender and he does a really good job for me I’ve used him for remortgage and now my next property purchase.

We get paid commission and charged a fee. If I only got paid by one, I would be paid less

In all honesty the cases we are generally quite complex. The commission paid by the lender is not enough, if you assume the average mortgage is £150k, that is about £450 commission. 

Each case takes say 10 hours (although I wish they took 10 hours at the minute), that is £45 an hour. 
From that we have to pay for:
Compliance,
Insurance,
IT,
Marketing,
Admin,
Regulatory costs, 
Rent, 
stationary (there have been no seminars to stock up on stationary this year),
etc etc. 

In order to offer a decent level of service, we have to limit the amount of cases we take on and so that is why we charge a fee.