Accord Mortgages and L&C broker combo has been a lengthy nightmare! Is this normal?

thebratprince

Hi all,

I wanted to see who else has had a recent experience with Accord Mortgages similar to mine, or if this is just the way things go sometimes. Overall, our experience with Accord this time, compared to a few years ago, has been night and day. 

So, we are 2 months from initial mortgage application, no offer in sight. During that two months, our seller has threatened to pull out of the sale multiple times and we have lost our buyer (found another one fairly quickly though, thank goodness). 

Accord requested many documents from us, taking days to analyse each one (I do have an adverse event in my credit history so can understand underwriters being thorough with us) before revising down the amount they could lend us, causing more delay. Because of that, and the 10,000 bank holidays we've had this spring, it took a month before the homebuyer's survey we ordered was even booked. It's been 10 days since the survey took place and it will be written up, hopefully, this afternoon.

Last time we dealt with Accord 2 years ago, it took a total of 3 weeks from application to offer, and that was over the Christmas holidays.

Even our solicitor has commented on how slow/stringent they seem to be at the moment - their panel request has taken weeks because Accord required so much additional information (and sign-off from half a dozen heads of department) before considering the request. 

Is this just a picture of how long mortgage applications are taking at the moment? Is our application taking ages because I have adverse credit (a default 3 years ago) and they are doing lots of additional checks? Or have Accord just changed some processes to become more stringent?

Finally, how long does it usually take from the survey coming back, to receiving a mortgage offer? I'm not expecting a miracle, but a rough timeframe would be so helpful. Our broker has been next to useless (they took 3 weeks of back and forth to submit our application in the first place, much to the ire of our seller) so I'm not confident I can get any answers from them. We've tried pushing them to push Accord, but they generally haven't been that helpful.



Apologies for the chaotic nature of my post - It's our first time buying and selling at the same time and our last purchase was a new build so we were essentially hand-held through the whole process. The 'real world' version is more complicated than we expected.

K_S

@thebratprince I can't comment on your specific case but what you have described is definitely not the norm with Accord, at least in my experience.

Imho, they have been (and continue to be) one of the better mainstream lenders who actually use common sense, give brokers good access to the underwriter, process applications and documents quickly and will do their best to make good cases fit.

thebratprince

K_S said:

@thebratprince I can't comment on your specific case but what you have described is definitely not the norm with Accord, at least in my experience.

Imho, they have been (and continue to be) one of the better mainstream lenders who actually use common sense, give brokers good access to the underwriter, process applications and documents quickly and will do their best to make good cases fit.

Thanks for giving your perspective - I expected that to be the case, since we had no issues dealing with them last time. I'm starting to wonder if our broker is the weak link in the chain here.

We responded to all Accord's queries and sent documents to our broker within hours or receiving a request, but it would then take a day or two for our broker to send them off to Accord. In the beginning we were even told our application was submitted, but when we followed up 2 weeks later, we found out it hadn't after all. 

raygcon

That is surprise, my experience with Accord last year was completely opposite, my application took 1 week from submit application via broker to getting the offer. And that happen during my job change as well ( so I only provide the contract for my new job as the proof of new income).

Giggidy

Our previous buyer had his mortgage application go through quite quick with Accord end of last year, but I feel your pain with L&C. Only 2 weeks into the process but already regretting using them. Can never get hold of the case manager and no change on reviewing docs, which has to be done all in one go before sending to the lender. Had I known, I would have applied directly with the lender. Is it possible that it's the brokers causing the delays in not sending the documents off in a timely fashion?

thebratprince

Giggidy said:

Our previous buyer had his mortgage application go through quite quick with Accord end of last year, but I feel your pain with L&C. Only 2 weeks into the process but already regretting using them. Can never get hold of the case manager and no change on reviewing docs, which has to be done all in one go before sending to the lender. Had I known, I would have applied directly with the lender. Is it possible that it's the brokers causing the delays in not sending the documents off in a timely fashion?

Yes, that's what I'm beginning to suspect to be honest. We used L&C last time too, and while the service was quick, we had a few problems with our broker going on holiday without handing our case over to someone else (happened this time too!), hard to contact, etc. But as our mortgage went through quickly, we had to reservations about using L&C again. Regretting it a bit now but we're so close to the finish line it probably isn't worth switching/dropping them. 

My sympathies to you! I hope that you get the result you need out of it, in spite of L&C. My only advice after being months into the process is to never get off their backs - no news is not good news, and they need to be pushed to push things. I'm sure you know this already though from your experience so far.

thebratprince

thebratprince said:

Giggidy said:

Our previous buyer had his mortgage application go through quite quick with Accord end of last year, but I feel your pain with L&C. Only 2 weeks into the process but already regretting using them. Can never get hold of the case manager and no change on reviewing docs, which has to be done all in one go before sending to the lender. Had I known, I would have applied directly with the lender. Is it possible that it's the brokers causing the delays in not sending the documents off in a timely fashion?

Yes, that's what I'm beginning to suspect to be honest. We used L&C last time too, and while the service was quick, we had a few problems with our broker going on holiday without handing our case over to someone else (happened this time too!), hard to contact, etc. But as our mortgage went through quickly, we had to reservations about using L&C again. Regretting it a bit now but we're so close to the finish line it probably isn't worth switching/dropping them. 

My sympathies to you! I hope that you get the result you need out of it, in spite of L&C. My only advice after being months into the process is to never get off their backs - no news is not good news, and they need to be pushed to push things. I'm sure you know this already though from your experience so far.

By 'to reservations' I meant 'no reservations' of course. Doh.

thebratprince

raygcon said:

That is surprise, my experience with Accord last year was completely opposite, my application took 1 week from submit application via broker to getting the offer. And that happen during my job change as well ( so I only provide the contract for my new job as the proof of new income).

Thanks for adding your experience, I'm definitely beginning to realise maybe Accord isn't the issue here! 

K_S

I can't speak for L&C specifically but usually with the larger volume brokers, the mortgage adviser is only involved in providing advice.

Once a specific lender recommendation has been sent and accepted by the client, the case is then handled by an administrator/case-manager who keys in and submits the application, tracks lender queries and collates responses, etc. Based on my industry experience, these case managers can have 50-100 cases in their bucket at any one time so you can imagine the kind of competing priorities they have. Depending on the firm, they often have SLAs of 1-3 working days to review/action queries, etc.

For straightforward/vanilla cases, the above is fine. But as soon as there is to-and-fro or broker inputs required, the number of touch-points increases, things can fall between the cracks, etc.

Just to be clear, I'm not dissing L&C in any way, simply outlining the processes used. There is more than enough business in the industry for brokers of all kinds - large volume businesses, small independent firms and anything in between!

kingstreet

If I get docs in for an app, they are uploaded immediately. We can't afford to delay this because it may take the lender five or more working days to assess them.

K_S

kingstreet said:

If I get docs in for an app, they are uploaded immediately. We can't afford to delay this because it may take the lender five or more working days to assess them.

@kingstreet Or if it's with Nationwide, 13 working days for processing new documents as per current service levels!