Using estate agents' in-house or recommended mortgage advisors?

Willis75

BrumBab30 said:

We are currently looking for a house and we are first time buyers. We are really struggling with booking appointments with estate agents, surprisingly not because it's difficult to get viewings, because they are forcing us to qualify with either their in-house or recommended mortgage advisers, even though we have already sorted a mortgage in principle with our own mortgage broker. Some of these estate agents are suggesting that to go with their mortgage advisers means that we will get preferential treatment when it comes to making an offer. From my research, we are not legally obligated to use their mortgage advisors if we have our own? Is this correct or do we have to use their preferred mortgage people? I don't feel comfortable going through all our finances and having soft credit checks with several different estate agents, when we have done all that already.  Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with pushy estate agents who are forcing us to use their own? Any help would be much appreciated! 

I had this issue with a particular aggressive EA and I threatened to report them to the Property Ombudsman. They backed down immediately. I provided MIP and proof of funds from sale of existing property. That was sufficient..oops, I also told them that I would put flyers through every door of properties I was interested in and book my own viewings. They showed me every property that I wanted to view after that.

NameUnavailable

BrumBab30 said:

NameUnavailable said:

Most EA's will ask you to speak to their MA to qualify an offer. You should only need to give them basic details so that they can confirm that the lending won't be an issue (obviously you have that with an AIP but you could of course put false info to acheive that).

FWIW I had sorted a mortgage but when I agreed to speak to the agents MA they were able to offer a much better deal than I'd been able to find, so in my case I'm glad I did it.

What would you consider basic details? When we booked to view a property with an EA, they pushed us into arranging a financial services appointment, despite the fact we told them we are working with a broker. They said for this financial meeting they wanted us to provide the following:

• photographic ID
• Proof of deposit (latest bank statement including name and address)
• 3 months consecutive bank statements 
• 3 months payslips
• credit report

We were not asked to present these to our broker when we did the mortgage in principle and our broker said they will only ask for that once we've put in an offer that's accepted and then start the process.

No, I never had to do that, not until I wanted to proceed with an actual mortgage application.

Just tell them you aren't going to use them to get your mortgage and don't want to waste your or their time - but you will be happy to confirm details of savings/funds from sale and income to prove that you can afford the home.