Accord mortgage timeline

watermelonspring

Has anyone applied with Accord recently? I’m hearing good things about their timeline. I applied today following a failed application with Santander as they were unwilling to lend the full amount that we needed. 

Anyone else going through their mortgage journey with Accord?

onyx911

We haven’t applied yet but broker told us today it’s 2 weeks. 

Aurorax

My SO, and myself, applied with Accord very recently, we applied on September 3rd, they instructed valuation on 7th and issued full mortgage offer on the 8th. We had a somewhat straight forward case, so not sure if that made too much difference. We are FTB, but have a fairly decent deposit.

tripled

Our broker submitted our application to Accord on 3rd September. A few days later we heard off the estate agent the valuation is booked for 30th (today). We haven't heard anything from our broker or Accord. We're hoping no news is good news and will ask the broker for an update if we don't hear anything by the end of this week.

Justellie

Hello, I'm in the process with accord as well and so nervous!!! I had my valuation yesterday (all fine) they queried my student loan today, I'm so impatient! I just want to know the answer!!! 

tripled

Offer came through broker two days after valuation, so on Friday 2nd Oct. No queries or hiccups at any point, the broker must have done a good job. Final timeline:

3rd Sept - Application submitted
8th Sept - Valuation booked with agent
30th Sept - Valuation carried out
2nd Oct - Mortgage offer

watermelonspring

My valuation is finally booked for today!

gab3x

At the start of my journey. House value £600k so told that valuation will almost certainly be done in person.
14th October - Application submitted
TBC - Valuation booked with agent
TBC - Valuation carried out
TBC - Mortgage offer

JTAT2020

I am currently in the process of a mortgage application with Accord via a MB.
Our Situation - FTB 20% LTV (I am contractor via limited company and other half is self employed). Generally good Credit Scores. 2 Defaults from myself 4 years go (settled) 
Timeline
24/9/2020 – AIP received from Accord
25/9/2020 – Full application submitted
2/10/2020 – Queries and additional documents required. – answered and submitted immediately  
9/10/2020 – More queries, requesting that cash sales for my. other half which is kept at home (due to COVID) is put into bank and proof required, also queries regarding childcare etc. - done and confirmation submitted.       
12/10/2020 – Confirmation via broker that valuation instructed.
15/10/2020 – Valuation carried out.
16/10/2020 – Queries (my day rate average is £14.00 less per day than contract) COVID, employment status and vehicle payments - All queries answered and submitted that day.
16/10/2020 – Confirmation from broker that house was valued ok.
20/10/2020 – Further queries and further evidence required (very detailed evidence required from accountant). - All responded to and information provided that day.
22/10/2020. - Awaiting offer!!! (No correspondence as yet - hopefully no more queries)

I appreciate that due to our situation we are required to provide a lot more evidence. The wait is tough, the seller is constantly in contact with the estate agent which doesn't make things easier as they need to move quick and there is no chain either end.

Hope the above helps.
  

gab3x

Update:
14th October - Application submitted
? - Valuation booked with agent
28th of October - Valuation carried out
TBC - Mortgage offer

flynbob

Hello everyone. Just thought I'd post a little review of our excellent experience with Accord. My partner and I are first time buyers and are both employed full time with decent income and excellent credit scores. We had a 19% deposit and were asking to borrow £40,000 less than our "maximum" affordability amount suggested on Accords website using their affordability calculator.  I'm in an industry that is considered high risk and the way my pay is displayed on my payslip is very confusing to lenders. So much so that we spend about 4 weeks in the underwriting process with Nationwide before giving up on them as they were so unhelpful. Rather than discussing their concerns they seemed to just remain puzzled and put our application to the bottom of the pile. Our broker suggested Accord as they have a common sense approach to underwriting; they turned out to be our perfect lenders. If you have a great broker like we did, that is half the battle. My biggest advice to first time buyers is ... If your broker is confident they can find you a lender and get things sorted, have trust and try and relax and let them do their job. Ours was very confident it would get sorted but I couldn't stop that worrying voice in the back of my mind, I wish i'd relaxed more and let them do what they do best. 

-We had our DIP on the 28th of September and all documents were submitted that day. There was a problem accessing my partners previous address on records so we provided an old bill to prove this. 
- 5th October they realised I'd not sent a complete bank statement for the month of September (completely my fault), the dates only showed up to the 28th September so I immediately sent over the full bank statement.
- 7th October they noticed a fairly large payment from my employer to me in my bank statements. They wanted clarification of what this was as it was not listed on my payslip. This was a saving scheme I ended and had been cashed in to my bank account - fair enough! They were happy with just my explanation. 
- 16th October they noticed that my partners' basic pay increased very slightly and they asked for proof of the pay increase. 
-19th October we received the requested reference from my partners' HR department and sent it straight over. The valuation was also completed on this day. We never received the report of this so assumed it was all ok. 
- Now on the 20th October we were not aware of this interaction between our broker and Accord, and I am so so glad we weren't!!!! Accord during the final stages of the underwriting, found an article online stating that my company was "hanging by a thread" ... This was completely untrue and just an opinion of one of our "colleagues", which turned out to be completely unfactual. Our industry is under threat because of COVID but set to improve the minute a vaccine/better treatment continues and simply put, our economy relies on our industry - we are the most financially stable company within that industry in the UK. Our broker did an incredible job of arguing this case and discussed with the business development manager that it would be foolish not to lend to us as the majority of industries at the moment are all struggling. If they only lent to industries that are safe during this climate, they would have no business. Accord asked for a reference from my employer to confirm I was not at risk of redundancy ... Of course, no legal department in any reputable company will confirm this, and my broker didn't even attempt to ask me to obtain one. My broker did however already have a reference I'd given him from my employer, just in case they wanted proof of my salary and other details of my employment which is very very different to your standard employer. Having documents like this in advance, just in case, could save you a lot of time. 
-22rd October - Mortgage offer accepted. My broker then informed me of the interaction they had a few days previous, and I was so glad he hadn't informed me of it as it would have caused so much unnecessary worry. 

I had several items buzzing through my head throughout this process that I believed would make us "appear" unreliable. Given how complicated our situation appeared, for Accord to offer us a mortgage and within 15 working days is just incredible. They really do use common sense, accept your explanations if they make sense and want to help. I've read so many negative reviews and I can only imagine the kind of people that write them.... If you have all documents ready (like HR references) and are ready with explanations, are open and honest about everything and have a decent broker, then you will have absolutely no worries and whizz through this process with Accord in a much shorter time than any other mortgage company. I'm really impressed with them. 

My biggest advice is to try and relax as much as possible. Don't let the worries get to you, instead of searching through Equifax/Clearscore etc to see if they have done searches on you (still to this day a hard search hasn't appeared on our reports) ... Occupy yourself or do some mindfulness!! I've learned a lot from this process and if I could do it all again I would have more faith. Calling your broker every day and checking forums/credit reports/trust pilot only adds to your anxiety and increases stress levels far higher than they need to.