Mortgage Brokers -are they worth it.

chelt_Robin

My fixed rate mortgage expires in around 6 months time so I am looking to remortgage. Current rate is 1.79% with Nat West. House is valued at £314 000 remaining mortgage is £116000 with 22 years.

I am employed and have a plus £50K income, my partner does not work. 

Question, my circumstances are fairly straught fwd. Most brokers would charge me a fee (unless anyone can recomend one which does not). Should I go DIY using search engines like Money Saving Expert and see what my current lender will do. 

I know I want a 2 year fix, so its a case of finding the cheapest deal 

GAMBITv5

Use a free broker. Habito, Trussle or L&C.

gsf600y

Personally, if things are straightforward, and you're happy to hunt around yourself, I'd say "no".
As a contractor, I did use one, which helped me find a decent mortgage based purely on my daily rate.

Since then, I've used one again, but have to say with the completely !!!!!! service that I had to go through with all the online solicitors and conveyancers (Integrar and LMS) that all the major banks now use, I'm not sure if having a broker in the mix just added to the mountain of paperwork.

ElwoodBlues

I think if your circumstances are straight forwards then no need for a broker. My broker steered me into a 2 year fix a few years back when I was thinking of going for 5. Yes, it was unbeknown to both of us where things would be now, but I'm going to be about 17k worse off for following his advice! And that's on a relatively small mortgage (120k). I think the broker was keen on shorter fixes because of the repeat fee for him each time.

K_S

chelt_Robin said:

My fixed rate mortgage expires in around 6 months time so I am looking to remortgage. Current rate is 1.79% with Nat West. House is valued at £314 000 remaining mortgage is £116000 with 22 years.

I am employed and have a plus £50K income, my partner does not work. 

Question, my circumstances are fairly straught fwd. Most brokers would charge me a fee (unless anyone can recomend one which does not). Should I go DIY using search engines like Money Saving Expert and see what my current lender will do. 

I know I want a 2 year fix, so its a case of finding the cheapest deal 

@cheltrobin There's a good thread here that discusses this topic.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6386119/what-can-a-broker-do-that-i-cant/p1

There are plenty of brokers that don't charge a fee, the MSE guide here can help you find one
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/best-mortgages-cashback/#step3

As long as the broker is whole of market, whether or not they charge a fee or not has no bearing on the products they can access.

In your case, NatWest allows product-switches at the 6 month point and it'll be quite competitive so if you're almost there, that might well be the best option.

NatWest does do dual pricing (sometimes in the favour of brokers sometimes the other way) so do check broker PT rates (Product Transfer rates and range guide - https://www.intermediary.natwest.com/intermediary-solutions/products.html ) to compare.

Hope you're able to get able to get a decent rate, good luck!

caprikid1

I guess, given your circumstances a good broker would be able to advice on protection as well.

Are you sufficiently insured ? You say your partner does not work so I hope you have more than just life insurance.

We insure our cars, our phones, our house, our pets but not the actual thing that pays for it all....... absolute madness.

I should add I am not a mortgage broker.

GAMBITv5

caprikid1 said:

I guess, given your circumstances a good broker would be able to advice on protection as well.

Are you sufficiently insured ? You say your partner does not work so I hope you have more than just life insurance.

We insure our cars, our phones, our house, our pets but not the actual thing that pays for it all....... absolute madness.

I should add I am not a mortgage broker.

Agreed. Having previously worked in protection for a major high street bank, only 3 in 10 completions result in a protection policy being taken out. Only 1 in 10 is deemed sufficient should the worst happen…

silvercar

Sometimes it is worth it and sometimes not. We’ve gone the broker way and independently at various stages over the years.  If it is extremely straightforward and you are confident you can deal with the paperwork, then you could go alone. If the case is a bit more complex and a broker would know where to look and make the path smoother then go with a broker.

Most recently we were doing a 2 borrowers, 1 owner mortgage and went through a broker, even though we knew they would end up at Barclays door, just because it made the process smoother.  

Previously, we’ve gone direct for our residential mortgage. We also once went direct as we already had a relationship with the bank through my business banking advisor and that gave us some leverage.
Of course knowing what you want helps you decide whether you need a broker.

tripled

I'm a contractor and the specialist broker I used for the house purchase was superb, but not cheap. I thought the remortgage would be more straight-forward so went with L&C to save money, but it's been chaos.

I still think it can be useful to use a broker, mainly because they can check your application for accuracy, make sure that you fit a given lender's profile, answer any questions you have and provide support throughout the process. However, as I have found, if you pick the wrong one then it could well be more aggro than it's worth, particularly if your circumstances are straight-forward.

BigBoss

I asked this question the other week: What can a broker do that I can't?

We eventually still went with a broker. We probably didn't *need* to when all said and done, but for the relatively small fee, I'd like to think that the lender was more likely to offer us if we used a familiar vehicle to them.