Mortgage broker or do it myself?

hugo15

I'm needing to take out a new mortgage due to separation. No current mortgage. Mortgage value would be £90k, around 35% LTV and approx 1.5 times salary. I'm 48 and would be looking to take it over 12 years. No loans credit card debts, etc. MSE credit card club score is 999. Only slight complication as far as I can see is that I need transfer of equity sorting out. Oh, and I'm time poor as work is crazy busy at the moment!

I've had an initial chat with one mortgage broker and their fees would be £1500. From reading other threads on here that seems really high.

My thoughts are that my circumstances seem pretty straightforward and this shouldn't be too hard to arrange, other than the time issue I have. Can I do this myself or should I look for another broker with lower fees?

[Deleted User]

Seems a pretty high fee but with a small mortgage they might not think it is worth their time to work on the lenders commission only.  

I would probably use a broker on the time basis alone.   For instance I do a fair bit of evening or weekend chats with people and then email documents back and forth.  The initial conversation is around 30 minutes and then people can fire documents over whenever works for them.   That is a lot better than trying to take 90 minutes for a bank to go through their box ticking process.  

Only you can decide what this convenience is worth to you but there are fee free brokers as well

ACG

That fee is ridiculous for your circumstances. 
You do not need a broker, but only you can weigh up whether it is worth paying a little bit (somewhere between £300-500) for someone to take the hassle away from you or not. 

The Transfer of equity will be dealt with by the solicitors at the legal stage. 

Redwino222

I used a broker.  She came up with the same mortgage I had got through a comparison site but the advantage was the paperwork.  It was minimum effort for me, I knew she was checking everything and Dealt with any queries from the lenders.

cost £250 and worth every penny - I know is was straightforward and I could have done it myself but it took the stress out of it

mrseff_2

hugo15 said:

I'm needing to take out a new mortgage due to separation. No current mortgage. Mortgage value would be £90k, around 35% LTV and approx 1.5 times salary. I'm 48 and would be looking to take it over 12 years. No loans credit card debts, etc. MSE credit card club score is 999. Only slight complication as far as I can see is that I need transfer of equity sorting out. Oh, and I'm time poor as work is crazy busy at the moment!

I've had an initial chat with one mortgage broker and their fees would be £1500. From reading other threads on here that seems really high.

My thoughts are that my circumstances seem pretty straightforward and this shouldn't be too hard to arrange, other than the time issue I have. Can I do this myself or should I look for another broker with lower fees?

I used a broker for my recent mortgage, higher value, bit of adverse and only a 16 year term - she charged me £150 (although, full disclosure this was mates rates as a friend of a friend - would have been £250 otherwise but this was for the HTB element only). She was brilliant - it was my first mortgage and if I ever go through house buying again I would use her without question. I certainly wouldn't think you need to spend that kind of money given the circumstances you describe. Good luck!

Windofchange

Echo the above. The broker ended up recommending the product that I had considered anyway, but the amount of stress and hassle they took off me through the process was worth every penny of the £200 I paid them. However, for you it should be a really straight forward case for a 35% LTV, so depends on what your time is worth I guess.

K_S

@hugo15 I'll differ a bit from the above consensus, based on this being a moneysaving website. You don't really need a broker for the "admin". And even if you did, you certainly don't need to pay a fee for a broker to do your admin, there are plenty of fee-free brokers with excellent processing systems who can do that well with minimum stress and taking no more than an hour or so of your time over the process. Some may even pay you cashback.

Alternatively, if you know what deal you want, a lot of mainstream lenders offer execution-only applications where you may not even need to subject yourself to any human interaction at all.

getmore4less

Have you thought about what you want beyond the £90k 12 years

The LTV will give you the choice of the best rates around 


Are you comfortable doing the comparisons with fees and cashbacks(most sites do it wrong)


For some lenders that will be in the fee/no fee amounts so that would need checking


Do you need more than 10% overpayment


Do you want to squeeze the rate and change often or happy with the longer game and pay a bit more.


Might you need to consider ERC or are you probably going to stick with this house for a while.


One factor I would consider is which lenders play fair on retention deals. some get you in but their next offer is not so good and as the loan gets smaller any move lender fees  become more significant.

AnotherJoe

hugo15 said:

I'm needing to take out a new mortgage due to separation. No current mortgage. Mortgage value would be £90k, around 35% LTV and approx 1.5 times salary. I'm 48 and would be looking to take it over 12 years. No loans credit card debts, etc. MSE credit card club score is 999. Only slight complication as far as I can see is that I need transfer of equity sorting out. Oh, and I'm time poor as work is crazy busy at the moment!

I've had an initial chat with one mortgage broker and their fees would be £1500. From reading other threads on here that seems really high.

My thoughts are that my circumstances seem pretty straightforward and this shouldn't be too hard to arrange, other than the time issue I have. Can I do this myself or should I look for another broker with lower fees?

'High' doesn't cover it. I think we have easily reached the realm of exorbitant.