Find a Mortgage - yourself or via Broker / Advisor?

tinytiddles

I would always use a broker because they often have access to better deals than going direct and they have the professional knowledge and judgement to place you with a lender who is likely to accept you. 

Bucki

tinytiddles said:

I would always use a broker because they often have access to better deals than going direct and they have the professional knowledge and judgement to place you with a lender who is likely to accept you. 

Good advise thanks.
that is what I wondered, whether going direct would be same deal as if via a broker.

cheers

K_S

Bucki said:

this got me confused : “ If you do choose a fee-charging broker, try find one where its only payable on receipt of the mortgage offer (quite common) or completion (much less common).” what does this mean?

@bucki Sorry if that wasn't clear. What I meant is, if you choose to use a broker that does charge a fee, then the can be charged at a few different points in the process.

1. Some brokers will charge upfront

2. Some will charge before the full mortgage application is submitted

3. Some will charge only when a succesful mortgage offer is received

4. Some will charge only when the mortgage goes through to completion

What I was trying to say is that if you do pay a fee, as an applicant you want to pay it earliest when an offer is issued. At that point 95% of the broker's work is done.

ACG

Generally speaking brokers who work for the large national estate agents are not the best - either new to the industry or work from a limited panel. It is usually a place to learn the job before going it alone or working for a better company. 

If your key thing is cost, then you either need a fee free broker or do it yourself. There are a handful of lenders who are all in and around the same sort of rate. If you are worrying about 0.1% difference which will probably equate to a couple of quid a month, the broker who finds you the absolute cheapest deal is unlikely to save you £300 over the course of 2 years. 

A broker is not a price comparison serve and this is where people need to realise what our job entails. Any idiot (I am not calling you an idiot btw) can find the cheapest deal, you do not need a broker for that. Our job kicks in when we are researching the best lender for you,  packaging your application to prevent problems, or if problems do arise - fixing them. We are on hand to keep your stress levels down and answer any questions or concerns you may have. You probably wont get all of that with a fee free broker as they inevitably have to do a lot more applications which in turn takes up more time. 

Bucki

@ACG

makes sense indeed.
I thought every advisor is same as they have access to the market.

I dont understand to why e.g an advisor from an Estate Agent is less efficient than one that is self employed?

what am I missing here?

I talker to two advisors now, one from William H Brown who ask for £500 one of fee and u can remortgage every time and then just pay £99. Whilst the a self employed one would charge me £299 or £399 each application.

both got me a MiP with Nation Wide with more or less +- £10 difference in price package.

They, both would assist as you said with all paper work and choose a reliable lender and and and.

Now, thinking about it: i would pay £500 for W H Brown and after 2 years lets say, I pay £99 = £600 

Whereas the other one I pay £500 or £600 in total as well. More or less same fee but I am in dilemma how I choose the ‘best’ advisor.

i mean, you guys on here as Mortgage advisor, how I know which one out of u all is most preferred / reliable and beneficial for me? Including, what do u all charge for ‘same job’? 

  

getmore4less

Bucki said:

Yes, it was William H brown agent that recommended. Why would you say to avoid them?? Because they dont have best deals , because they are bad or just too expensive?

As per the free mortgage advisors, this got me confused : “ If you do choose a fee-charging broker, try find one where its only payable on receipt of the mortgage offer (quite common) or completion (much less common).” what does this mean?

How much do the Advisors on here charge ? And will the advisors fee include all the process of paper work and the contact with solicitors and whatever is needed?

i am new to all this and I dont know what the whole process of buying a property consists of. 

That screams get help  if you want the process to go smoothly and relatively quickly.

if you have no family/friends to help it will need to be elsewhere



it can be quite easy to make tiny errors that just cause delays on the mortgage side a broker can avoid most by packaging any application through experience and is often able to point out other bits of the process you need to be aware of.



You already started by overestimating what sort of property you should look at on the mid April thread.
On that thread missed off important information from a previous thread covering similar ground. 

How confident are you gong to be documenting your gifted deposit(from foreign source) for the lender?


Being guided to a Estate agent based  broker and thinking that is the norm, they will be most likely  giving the EA kickbacks and have to earn  that from you somehow, also that gives rise to potential conflict of interest with the person working for the home sellers.


I suspect you may trust estate agent too much as well.


Plenty of fee free around but at your level of mortgage the amount paid by the lender may not cover a lot of time  for a very thorough broker.

[Deleted User]

Ask william h brown for a list of lenders they use.  
I believe it hovers around 20ish, perhaps a few more. 

I use 75 lenders, acg is around the same from memory.  He has access to lenders that i dont and i have access to lenders he doesn't.
Within that as a specialist in a specific area he has access to specific underwriting processes with certain lenders that others dont. 
He can access some obscure lenders directly and i have to use a 3rd party to get them.
I currently have access to an exclusive deal from a high street lender that no one else in my town can access.

William h brown/sequence charge one of the highest fees for one of the worst offerings. Not all brokers are equal. 
And this is before i go in to experience of advisors at these firms and the sales culture that exists. They operate purely to try sell you insurance where they load your premiums to pay commission at very high levels.  

An independent broker generally has more lenders, cheaper insurance, cheaper fees, and more control over their own business to concentrate on the right outcome for a client rather than just making a sale

ACG

Not every broker is the same, in the same way that not every chef is the same and not every decorator is the same. I used to own a pub and we had good and bad bar staff, some could pull a proper pint, others just filled the glass with a pint of beer. 

Lets look at things in a mercenary way - money. 
You pay the broker at WH brown £500 today, they are probably inclined to your case over the line. In 2 years time, they are getting a percentage of £99 - will they be prioritising you or the new £500 customer? Morally, you should both be getting equal treatment but will you? This will of course depend on the broker. 

An employed broker gets a wage, a self employed brokers gets paid if your mortgage goes through... Who is more incentivised to get your mortgage through? 

Other factors:

WH brown as far as I am aware do not have a full panel of lenders (I could be wrong on this though). We have over 80 lenders, although in reality we only use about 20 or so. It seems to not matter now, but what happens if the best lender is not on their panel in 2 years or your circumstances change and become complex? 

Estate agents are generally well known for a higher turnover of staff, they train people up but also work them quite hard with heavy targets. Will your broker be there in 2 years? 


I am not saying you should or should not use a broker, this is not the place for that. But you are looking at one aspect of the whole process. I appreciate cost is an important factor but I was always told to surround yourself with good people. Having a good broker on hand is like having a good tradesman or accountant. They can help save you a fortune or a million headaches in the long run.

I have customers who I did mortgages for 5-10 years ago, I might not have done their last 1 or 2 mortgages but they pop up to run something by me and I help them - free of charge and it is not a problem even if nothing comes from it. They are our customer for life - yes we charge each time we do a mortgage but giving them 10 minutes on the phone is not a problem. That is because we charge a fair fee and we are able to give customers all the time in the world (within reason). 

I am not trying to big our job up, I am just trying to say we are not a price comparison service there is a lot more to it and a good broker can offer a lot more.

Bucki

@getmore4less

well, what choice am I left with?
i cannot look through people if they are trustworthy / worth or not.

how do i know if a Broker from Estate Agent is less beneficial than a self employed one? How?

by the way, the property is via a different estate agent and I just happened to got in contact with the W H Brown as it was easy. Whilst the self employed one (who also worked fo W H Brown) found on internet, she is local too.

anyway, i will opt for Mortgage Advisor but then is just “choosing” the right one is the problem.

As I said; they bow got me a MIP from same lender/ Nation Wide with more or less same packages.

so how can one be less worthy than the other in this case?

NiaBrown

Generally - we're first time buyers and initially I went with the usual L&C, Habito routes but were told we couldn't get a mortgage for longer than ten years due to husband's retirement around that time. I was disappointed but actually prepared to accept that, BUT

Conveyancer then recommended a local broker. At first I was a wee bit suspicious (oh yeah, nice kickback etc etc) but the local broker has been absolutely worth his weight in gold. When it turned out the property was "non-traditional construction" but the survey was vague, our broker was on the phone to the valuer that same day to find out more and see which lenders were OK with it (thankfully most were)). We had our mortgage offer within 6 working days of full application without a single request for more documents, even though I'm on a fixed term contract and husband had to show income after retirement. (We got a 15 year 85% LTV in the end)

All the way through he's been in touch regularly and has even put up with my dry sense of humour and my bad jokes about Mother-in-law lending us £10k because she's an 84 year old drug dealer Our broker will charge us £395 on the day we draw down our mortgage and has been worth every penny.

I absolutely think a broker (and a local indie one at that) is worth it - but it's the little, less obvious stuff (like frequent contact etc) that make the difference to me personally - if you have nobody you can ask for recommendations then maybe try TrustPilot?