Accord mortgage timeline

gab3x

flynbob said:

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. 

Great post and thank you for the closing statement, very wise in these trying times.
I work in hotels so this is another at risk industry and I have been furloughed for 5 months but now I am back and I even got a small payrise. So far Accord has been very good at not making me wait to have three payslips on my full salary, instead trusting my employers communique to me about return to my post.

Interesting re credit searches, none were done on me either. I am 999/999 so don't worry about it but as you say it doesn't really matter. All it matters is that they offer a mortgage at a fair rate.

Small update on my part:
14th October - Application submitted
28th of October - Valuation carried out
TBC - Mortgage offer (broker informs me he expect this to arrive in a week or so)

flynbob

Fantastic - glad it's all going well. Looks like you'll have your offer by the end of the week, if not certainly by the beginning of next week!

gab3x

Small update on my part:
14th October - Application submitted
28th of October - Valuation carried out & lender asked for most recent payslip
3rd of November - Lender requested Damp and Timber report pending issuance of offer. We are now waiting for owners to get this done.
TBC - Mortgage offer 

gab3x

Update
14th October - Application submitted & Credit Search done (shows up on Equifax)
28th of October - Valuation carried out & lender asked for most recent payslip
3rd of November - Lender requested Damp and Timber report pending issuance of offer. 
11th of November - Sent the Damp & Timber report with offer of remedial work. We are now awaiting to see response from Accord and whether they will make offer contingent on work being done. Value of work is 0.6% of total transaction.
TBC - Mortgage offer 

gab3x

Mortgage offer in the post. A month in total for the whole process made complicated by asking for Damp and Timber report by the bank's surveyor.

Final timeline:
14th October - Application submitted & Credit Search done (shows up on Equifax)
28th of October - Valuation carried out & lender asked for most recent payslip
3rd of November - Lender requested Damp and Timber report pending issuance of offer. 
11th of November - Sent the Damp & Timber report with offer of remedial work. We are now awaiting to see response from Accord and whether they will make offer contingent on work being done. Value of work is 0.6% of total transaction.
17th of November - Broker informs me the mortgage offer is issued and in the post

raygcon

Hope it's useful

30 Mar : Application submitted , valuation booked straight away
2 Apr : Valuation carried out, get result back the same day
7 Apr : Chase up with broker only to find out that Accord has approved the mortgage since 2 Apr

Total time 4 days

My case is pretty straight forward as I have a perfect credit history + the valuation can be booked on the same week.
I use Habito as a broker and I highly recommend them, very fast and very good system ( although it takes them a while to update the status )

K_S

Accord's been excellent in the past few months - speed, common sense approach, access to underwriters, willing to look at the backstory, great with debt con, and a suite of competitive repayment, I/O and offset products.

As a broker, they're like a breath of fresh air compared to some of the high-street names.

rsjg80

How do you know when valuations are done?! A few people have said that on here and unsure how they know!

I'm a FTB and have used a broker to put in my application today (well, yesterday - I struggle with anxiety and insomnia and this is making it all worse!!) and paid the application fee.

Have concerns about the whole process from it being approved, to valuations, surveys and conveyancing!! No idea how long each part should take but aware it's a bit 'how long is a piece of string'.

I'm hoping being a FTB, with perfect credit history, public sector jobs and a having been given a MiP previously with them will speed the whole thing up... but that's probably wishful thinking!! Mostly worried about valuation as we had to go 30k over on an OIEO house, but also we're older FTBs, with quite a high wage/mortgage request...

Just want a yes or a no asap so I can try and sleep again rather than research every possible outcome, hurdle and horror story!!

Cammywatson033

Hi, can I just ask when your first payment with accord was taken? We move into our new build on the 29th September and have requested our payment dates are on the 1st of each month. Do you know if they’ll take a payment date in October or November? 

Fthomebuyer03

Hello, 
I had my valuation completed on the 5th Feb and came back ok. I presume it was desktop because the estate agent didn’t know about it. 

Does anyone know how soon after a successful valuation comes the mortgage offer?