Mortgage Advisors: Countrywide or Independent?

willywonka15

Hello, I'm hoping you fine folk here at MSE can hopefully share some advice and experience

**Sorry for the length but I want to share as much as possible**

Myself and my partner are looking to buy a house and we have started looking around and sourced our mortgage in principle. We are pretty new to this and appreciate we're naive and likely to be taken advantage of as we're "fresh blood" first-time buyers who are currently renting. (Apparently, this is a positive!)

We were recommended an independent mortgage advisor by a friend. He checked our details and confirmed based on the details we were good to go house hunting - he confirmed it's a flat fee of £295 we pay him once we want to move forward and offer etc. He did mention he would get a commission from insurance (if we did buy through him) but the cost to us is only £295. He didn't go into a large amount of great detail and our main communication has just been a few emails back and forth but this could change once we found a house I guess?

We have been told to look around for other advisors as some can access better deals so we met with another advisor who works for Countryside - they are situated in an estate agent but not solely tied to them meaning he could help us with other houses that weren't under the estate he's located in.

He said it would be £599 for a lifetime fee (this covers us needing to use them in the future) and £99 for admin work e.g. filling out paperwork etc. He said when it comes to using them for remortgaging, we only pay £99 for the admin as the 'lifetime' fee has already been paid and every 90 days they check rates in order to 'nurture' your mortgage and see if they can secure you a better deal. He said they can offer exclusive deals, do background checks on houses and advise whether or not they're correctly priced, overpriced, underpriced etc to make sure we're getting the right price and not being ripped off. We really liked him as a person and he felt genuine BUT he is a salesman at the end of the day! As he mostly works with the estate agents he's situated in, he said we would get fast-tracked to new properties before they go online to Rightmove and they'd actively help us get sorted with a house. They would advise on what to offer and provide a mortgage surveyor to ensure it's priced correctly too.

It all sounds very shiny and new but is a bit more expensive than the independent advisor and we don't know whether it's just a big sales pitch. Has anyone used Countrywide before and was it a worthwhile service? Is it worth the money or should we maybe look around? It does sound like it would be ideal for first-time buyers as we probably need a bit of hand-holding but every penny counts.

Many thanks for your time and help!

Grizebeck

I have never paid anyone for any financial dealings nor do I ever intend to do so.

jonnydeppiwish!

Independent and free. They get their fees from the mortgage advisors. Or do it yourself.

Postik

I've always used a broker or adviser but I'm self employed so have a number of special circumstances / requirements that a regular employed person wouldn't have.  Otherwise, I would probably do it myself.

My first house I used a "free" broker who earned a commission from the lender.

My second house I used a paid broker who charged a fee and also earned a commission from the lender.  I have to say I was impressed with the work he did and the deal he got me and I think it was worth the money.  I'm not convinced I would have got the same thing through a free broker but I could be wrong.  The only thing I would say, is that mine charged his fee once I received a valid mortgage offer.  I had a couple of properties fall through from no fault of my own so he ended up doing more work than he perhaps anticipated until I finally secured a property that went ahead.

amandaleeds

I've always used London and Country who charge no fee at all. I've had appointments with fee paying advisors and they usually offer the same or worse deal than L&C