Possible negligence from my mortgage broker

davidmcn

ACG said:

davidmcn said:

ACG said:

I was under the impression if the other party was not made aware then it is illegal

No, it's perfectly legal for the customer to record the call. The only thing which is generally illegal is recording a call if you're not a party to it.

Illegal was probably the wrong choice of word. But I did not think it could be used for anything without permission from both sides. 

No, it can be submitted as evidence. Of course, if it's a slam-dunk case because everyone knows the recording exists, it may well not actually reach court anyway.

SpiderLegs

RyanWills94 said:

SpiderLegs said:

RyanWills94 said:

SpiderLegs said:

Let me get this right. You’re blaming this broker and their (at worst) minor error for the consequences of a global pandemic. Good luck with that.

I don’t think you’ve read it right mate... he put us off remortgaging and purchasing the full price because he said there was early repayment charges when there would not have been. Since then we’ve paid copious amount of rent payments for the other half of the property when we could have remortgaged in 2019 .... read it again. 

Hi. 

I have read it again. You don’t mention rent payments at all. You talk about needing 15% deposit now whereas you didn’t in October 2019.

Perhaps you should write it again?

Yes, in October, if he was to have provided me with the correct advice then we could have bought the house with 5% deposit. If he didn’t know the answer, he could have called his BDM. Now because of his negligence, since we’ve taken his advice and waited till the end of the product (even know we didn’t have to) we have to find another 20,000.00.... I think I am in my rights as a customer to log a complaint, he’s a mortgage broker, he’s regulated to provide the correct advice and now he’s impeded me moving on with my life due to his advice, is that so wrong that I’m complaining complaining? If you was in my position i am sure you would! You pay for a service, you want no mistakes, this isn’t exactly a small mistake either?

Surely the mortgage paperwork you signed outlined the fees you would be charged? I assume you read and understood that.
Anyway I’m still not sure what you think your actual loss is here, but of course you can complain and probably get some minor compensation. How much are you hoping to get?

RyanWills94

SpiderLegs said:

RyanWills94 said:

SpiderLegs said:

RyanWills94 said:

SpiderLegs said:

Let me get this right. You’re blaming this broker and their (at worst) minor error for the consequences of a global pandemic. Good luck with that.

I don’t think you’ve read it right mate... he put us off remortgaging and purchasing the full price because he said there was early repayment charges when there would not have been. Since then we’ve paid copious amount of rent payments for the other half of the property when we could have remortgaged in 2019 .... read it again. 

Hi. 

I have read it again. You don’t mention rent payments at all. You talk about needing 15% deposit now whereas you didn’t in October 2019.

Perhaps you should write it again?

Yes, in October, if he was to have provided me with the correct advice then we could have bought the house with 5% deposit. If he didn’t know the answer, he could have called his BDM. Now because of his negligence, since we’ve taken his advice and waited till the end of the product (even know we didn’t have to) we have to find another 20,000.00.... I think I am in my rights as a customer to log a complaint, he’s a mortgage broker, he’s regulated to provide the correct advice and now he’s impeded me moving on with my life due to his advice, is that so wrong that I’m complaining complaining? If you was in my position i am sure you would! You pay for a service, you want no mistakes, this isn’t exactly a small mistake either?

Surely the mortgage paperwork you signed outlined the fees you would be charged? I assume you read and understood that.
Anyway I’m still not sure what you think your actual loss is here, but of course you can complain and probably get some minor compensation. How much are you hoping to get?

He’s impeded us buying the rest of our property due to his incompetence. We was in a position to purchase the rest of the property but he advised to wait. There was no need to wait as Leeds wouldn’t have paid early redemption fees.... we can’t afford to buy the rest which means we’ve paid rent on the other half pointlessly, and we will continue to pay rent until we buy the rest (if we can afford to ever buy the rest) you’re the only one not to understand what the brokers done wrong

warby68

Is this not to do with the terms of your mortgage, which were available to you as well as the broker?
A long way to go to prove he read your specific terms some time after the event and interpreted them wrongly plus why you didn't read them yourselves or query with your lender if it meant so much. It may be that he got something wrong but not sure its a straight leap to say you would have had your 95% mortgage and been sitting pretty now were it not for that one call.
You can complain of course but I think you will have to be very clear about who did what wrong and why you didn't read the terms yourself. Was the broker still actually contracted to you at the time or was it just a general enquiry on terms and conditions etc? 
You will need to make a clear story rather than just repeat negligence/incompetence/impeded your life as you have done a bit here  - using the emotive words doesn't help make your point but the facts will hopefully if its as simple as you say. 

RyanWills94

warby68 said:

Is this not to do with the terms of your mortgage, which were available to you as well as the broker?
A long way to go to prove he read your specific terms some time after the event and interpreted them wrongly plus why you didn't read them yourselves or query with your lender if it meant so much. It may be that he got something wrong but not sure its a straight leap to say you would have had your 95% mortgage and been sitting pretty now were it not for that one call.
You can complain of course but I think you will have to be very clear about who did what wrong and why you didn't read the terms yourself. Was the broker still actually contracted to you at the time or was it just a general enquiry on terms and conditions etc? 
You will need to make a clear story rather than just repeat negligence/incompetence/impeded your life as you have done a bit here  - using the emotive words doesn't help make your point but the facts will hopefully if its as simple as you say. 

The facts are there, you ask these questions to your broker who are qualified mortgage advisors, he’s there to answer questions, he answered mine incorrectly and miss advised me about saying to wait till the end of the product. The whole point of a mortgage advisor is to look at all the possible options which he failed to do so? That’s why people get brokers, because you pay for their advice, whereas if you do self execution you can not receive advice! My point is very clear, his has given us false information, which lead us to pay rent on the other half of the property when we didn’t not need to, we had our finances set and everything ready to purchase the rest of it. We went on his advice by not going ahead with it because he said “we are better to wait to avoid penalties” if he would have just taken time to look in to our product, like brokers are meant to! We would not be in this position. 

RyanWills94

And to add, he’s no longer regulated by the FCA due to negligence in the past and FCA have reported he final notice on their website... my solicitor says I have every right to complain and I will definitely get something out from this. 

[Deleted User]

2 things here:

1.  Call recording. I was always told that recording a call without telling someone is allowable for the purposes of backing up your version of events.  If its for a purpose that will be regularly used (like training for instance) then you have to declare it prior to recording to comply with gdpr.   So you would be fine with what you have done. 

2.  The mortgage advice.  Here is an ombudsman decision that has some parallels with your case. 
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/files/25593/DRN0359969.pdf
In here the client is complaining as she had to pay more to purchase the remaining share due to information errors from another lender.    The ombudsman essentially said that it wasn't being upheld as the lender hadn't made a decision to lend so you cant base your losses on a theoretical outcome.  
You have no evidence that Leeds would have accepted an application at the time, and you have no valuation from the lender (no other valuation matters) to quantify your losses.   Perhaps Leeds would have done their credit and income checks and then said they limit lending to 85%.   Do you have any proof they wouldn't have done that? 
The other aspect is that, in this matter, you had no advice from the broker.  You had information that turned out to be correct but you had no formal advice with a suitability report as business wasn't submitted. 
So you have a lot of losses in theory but the ombudsman doesn't appear to judge based on theory

Best you will get is a few hundred pounds to account for the distress and inconvenience.   The ombudsman precedent suggests you wont get any more as you cant prove you have lost money, you have only lost opportunity.  
As @ACG stated, complaints are to put you back in a position had nothing gone wrong. Compensating you financially to a 5% full staircasing purchase wouldnt be fair as thats not the position you were in. Thats where you hoped to be certainly, but not where you were. 


to clarify, i agree that you have been almost screwed over a bit here.  The information above is my thoughts based on other cases and having worked in complaints in a bank before.  

RyanWills94

Deleted_User said:

2 things here:

1.  Call recording. I was always told that recording a call without telling someone is allowable for the purposes of backing up your version of events.  If its for a purpose that will be regularly used (like training for instance) then you have to declare it prior to recording to comply with gdpr.   So you would be fine with what you have done. 

2.  The mortgage advice.  Here is an ombudsman decision that has some parallels with your case. 
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/files/25593/DRN0359969.pdf
In here the client is complaining as she had to pay more to purchase the remaining share due to information errors from another lender.    The ombudsman essentially said that it wasn't being upheld as the lender hadn't made a decision to lend so you cant base your losses on a theoretical outcome.  
You have no evidence that Leeds would have accepted an application at the time, and you have no valuation from the lender (no other valuation matters) to quantify your losses.   Perhaps Leeds would have done their credit and income checks and then said they limit lending to 85%.   Do you have any proof they wouldn't have done that? 
The other aspect is that, in this matter, you had no advice from the broker.  You had information that turned out to be correct but you had no formal advice with a suitability report as business wasn't submitted. 
So you have a lot of losses in theory but the ombudsman doesn't appear to judge based on theory

Best you will get is a few hundred pounds to account for the distress and inconvenience.   The ombudsman precedent suggests you wont get any more as you cant prove you have lost money, you have only lost opportunity.  

My solicitor said it is not illegal to record the call, it can be used as evidence. 

Based on the fact that we had an agreement in principle and accepted for £240,000.00 at the time, I think it’s safe to say based on our finances and credit history which from both parties is faultless, not a single debt or a single issue with any lenders we would have been accepted. I know it can’t be proved, the fact of the matter is, we didn’t get a chance to do the full application because our broker miss advised us, that must count for something? And we did have advice, he advised us to wait to avoid early repayment chargers, but there weren’t any! Surely surely this must stand for something, we were not given the opportunity to purchase the property due to his advice, we put for a service because you trust your brokers and you don’t understand the mortgage world, that’s why you seek help. If he would have just taken 10 minutes to check our product like they’re meant to we would not be in this position. As I have also stated above, he’s no longer regulated due to negligence, surely this helps us?

[Deleted User]

My solicitor said it is not illegal to record the call, it can be used as evidence. 

Based on the fact that we had an agreement in principle and accepted for £240,000.00 at the time, I think it’s safe to say based on our finances and credit history which from both parties is faultless, not a single debt or a single issue with any lenders we would have been accepted. I know it can’t be proved, the fact of the matter is, we didn’t get a chance to do the full application because our broker miss advised us, that must count for something? 

All that shows is that you got accepted on that day.  Lending criteria is changed all the time on a day to day basis.  Even Barclays recently changed the criteria of all the applications that had already been submitted and caused loads of people to be declined when they had previously had an acceptance.  The only confirmation that you have been accepted on certain terms is a mortgage offer. I would argue even an application doesn't indicate acceptance until offer

You didnt get the chance to do an application due to the wrong information.  You will get an apology and some compensation for this.  I would expect £250-£500 probably.   However, it goes back to the question of how do you calculate the value of a lost opportunity? You have no way of showing if the lender would have accepted you on that application,  you have no evidence of what the lender would have valued the property at the time, or what the property is worth now to a lender.  Down valuations are quite common so what would happen if the RICS person for the shared ownership company valued it at a certain price and then the mortgage company valued it less than that.  You would have to make up the difference.  Does that get taken in to account in the calculations? Who knows.    There are so many important figures here to calculate what you have lost and you don't have provable values for any of them.  

Yes you lost opportunity and its annoying. That's why you will likely get a payment under distress and inconvenience.

First thing you need to do is to write a complaint and send it to the address on the terms of business from the broker.  This has 8 weeks to work its way through this process and you can go to the ombudsman after this.  

csgohan4

Whether the broker had negligence for another customer bears no impact on your own case.  It is up to you to prove losses. By all means you can make a complaint against the former broker, but I suspect your clutching at straws if your expecting a big pay out.

Brokers advise and it is ultimately you that signed the paperwork after reading the T+c and understanding the ramifications.