Advice on broker needed

wigglers

Please excuse my niaivity,
I have been speaking to an advisor and they seem to think with the situation I'm in I can get a mortgage offer, but as it's a relatively low deposit the monthly payments would be possibly too high. 
I said I may need to wait until April when I can save up another chunk and get another £1k, ie 5k in my Lisa. 
My question is if I send all the documents etc and seek their knowledge/advice does this mean I'd have to pay a £299 fee even if we didn't go ahead with whatever they offer? Or even if they just offer us a loan of under what we require? Not an offer of a mortgage on a property? 

"We charge a fee of £299.00 for providing advice and submitting your new residential mortgage application. This fee 

becomes payable upon receipt of a formal offer from the lender.

The fee is for advice, research, recommendation, implementation (e.g. application, administration of arranging the loan). The

fee becomes payable upon receipt of a formal offer from the lender.

There is no fee for remortgage and product transfer applications.

We will receive and retain any commission paid by the lender when your mortgage completes. This amount will be confirmed by 

the lender in their disclosure document. Should you wish you can request to view the commission rates from each of the lenders 

we have considered at the time that we make our recommendation to you."

Thanks for the advice ☺️

ACG

Going off that wording, it is charged only if they get you a mortgage offer. 
You can only receive a mortgage offer if you find a property, made an offer, the offer is accepted, you apply for the mortgage and a valuation is carried out. 

They cant just pull a mortgage offer out on the back of a factfind/payslips etc. 

wigglers

OK so it's worth sending the documents and seeing at least what potentially we could borrow, to have an idea of what payments would be, which houses we can look at it etc without being liable for the fee yeah? 

ACG

It seems like there is no harm. 
Ask them. 

I have just had a call with a lady this afternoon where I told her our fee and when we charge. She asked questions about it to ensure she had it right. I ran through it with her. All brokers should be happy to run through their fees and when it becomes applicable. I would rather people ask questions than be unclear about it. 

Mark_d

wigglers said:

Please excuse my niaivity,
I have been speaking to an advisor and they seem to think with the situation I'm in I can get a mortgage offer, but as it's a relatively low deposit the monthly payments would be possibly too high. 
I said I may need to wait until April when I can save up another chunk and get another £1k, ie 5k in my Lisa. 
My question is if I send all the documents etc and seek their knowledge/advice does this mean I'd have to pay a £299 fee even if we didn't go ahead with whatever they offer? Or even if they just offer us a loan of under what we require? Not an offer of a mortgage on a property? 

"We charge a fee of £299.00 for providing advice and submitting your new residential mortgage application. This fee 

becomes payable upon receipt of a formal offer from the lender.

The fee is for advice, research, recommendation, implementation (e.g. application, administration of arranging the loan). The

fee becomes payable upon receipt of a formal offer from the lender.

There is no fee for remortgage and product transfer applications.

We will receive and retain any commission paid by the lender when your mortgage completes. This amount will be confirmed by 

the lender in their disclosure document. Should you wish you can request to view the commission rates from each of the lenders 

we have considered at the time that we make our recommendation to you."

Thanks for the advice ☺️

It sounds like the advice you've been getting is no better than you could get on this forum. Your loan-to-value ratio affects how good an interest rate you get.  I think you need a 40% deposit to get the best rates but going from a 5% deposit to a 10% deposit still makes a significant difference.

You shouldn't need to send documents to get high level advice.  If you're asking them to look through your documents and process the data then it's possible that they might want something to compensate them for their time and effort.

This time I remortgaged I went with a fee free broker (Mojo Mortgages).  The process worked well and I believe I got a great deal.  I'd certainly do the same next time I come to remortgage

wigglers

Mark_d said:

wigglers said:

Please excuse my niaivity,
I have been speaking to an advisor and they seem to think with the situation I'm in I can get a mortgage offer, but as it's a relatively low deposit the monthly payments would be possibly too high. 
I said I may need to wait until April when I can save up another chunk and get another £1k, ie 5k in my Lisa. 
My question is if I send all the documents etc and seek their knowledge/advice does this mean I'd have to pay a £299 fee even if we didn't go ahead with whatever they offer? Or even if they just offer us a loan of under what we require? Not an offer of a mortgage on a property? 

"We charge a fee of £299.00 for providing advice and submitting your new residential mortgage application. This fee 

becomes payable upon receipt of a formal offer from the lender.

The fee is for advice, research, recommendation, implementation (e.g. application, administration of arranging the loan). The

fee becomes payable upon receipt of a formal offer from the lender.

There is no fee for remortgage and product transfer applications.

We will receive and retain any commission paid by the lender when your mortgage completes. This amount will be confirmed by 

the lender in their disclosure document. Should you wish you can request to view the commission rates from each of the lenders 

we have considered at the time that we make our recommendation to you."

Thanks for the advice ☺️

It sounds like the advice you've been getting is no better than you could get on this forum. Your loan-to-value ratio affects how good an interest rate you get.  I think you need a 40% deposit to get the best rates but going from a 5% deposit to a 10% deposit still makes a significant difference.

You shouldn't need to send documents to get high level advice.  If you're asking them to look through your documents and process the data then it's possible that they might want something to compensate them for their time and effort.

This time I remortgaged I went with a fee free broker (Mojo Mortgages).  The process worked well and I believe I got a great deal.  I'd certainly do the same next time I come to remortgage

Yeah I just thought if they have proof of funds, deposit etc they can get a clearer picture, as I'm a first time buyer and not experienced. 

Emmia

wigglers said:

OK so it's worth sending the documents and seeing at least what potentially we could borrow, to have an idea of what payments would be, which houses we can look at it etc without being liable for the fee yeah? 

You can get a good idea of this, for free on comparison sites. Just put in your income, deposit and property value.  You can also play around with the term length, deposit size etc. to see how that affects your monthly payments/affordability.

And if/when you need a new fix, if your current lender is competitive you can just product switch - online and without needing to go through the rigmarole of a full remortgage.

wigglers

Emmia said:

wigglers said:

OK so it's worth sending the documents and seeing at least what potentially we could borrow, to have an idea of what payments would be, which houses we can look at it etc without being liable for the fee yeah? 

You can get a good idea of this, for free on comparison sites. Just put in your income, deposit and property value.  You can also play around with the term length, deposit size etc. to see how that affects your monthly payments/affordability.

And if/when you need a new fix, if your current lender is competitive you can just product switch - online and without needing to go through the rigmarole of a full remortgage.

Oh I see, do you know any decent comparison sites worth recommending? Tbh they gave the impression they would be able to secure a mortgage for us so I think that's why I feel like I should send docs etc over.

Emmia

wigglers said:

Emmia said:

wigglers said:

OK so it's worth sending the documents and seeing at least what potentially we could borrow, to have an idea of what payments would be, which houses we can look at it etc without being liable for the fee yeah? 

You can get a good idea of this, for free on comparison sites. Just put in your income, deposit and property value.  You can also play around with the term length, deposit size etc. to see how that affects your monthly payments/affordability.

And if/when you need a new fix, if your current lender is competitive you can just product switch - online and without needing to go through the rigmarole of a full remortgage.

Oh I see, do you know any decent comparison sites worth recommending? Tbh they gave the impression they would be able to secure a mortgage for us so I think that's why I feel like I should send docs etc over.

uSwitch, MSE probably has a calculator.

Personally I'd do my own homework on likely affordability/ costs before approaching a broker or bank

ACG

Emmia said:

wigglers said:

Emmia said:

wigglers said:

OK so it's worth sending the documents and seeing at least what potentially we could borrow, to have an idea of what payments would be, which houses we can look at it etc without being liable for the fee yeah? 

You can get a good idea of this, for free on comparison sites. Just put in your income, deposit and property value.  You can also play around with the term length, deposit size etc. to see how that affects your monthly payments/affordability.

And if/when you need a new fix, if your current lender is competitive you can just product switch - online and without needing to go through the rigmarole of a full remortgage.

Oh I see, do you know any decent comparison sites worth recommending? Tbh they gave the impression they would be able to secure a mortgage for us so I think that's why I feel like I should send docs etc over.

uSwitch, MSE probably has a calculator.

Personally I'd do my own homework on likely affordability/ costs before approaching a broker or bank

Many dont. I often have conversations with people about affordability, rates, fees etc. I sometimes even give people quotes on our solicitors so they have a starting point to go off and compare costs on that also. 

We dont win them all, but nothing bad ever came from a conversation. If we win the customer over, great. If not then hopefully we have helped them a little bit. We will never win them all. 

kingstreet

Emmia said:

wigglers said:

Emmia said:

wigglers said:

OK so it's worth sending the documents and seeing at least what potentially we could borrow, to have an idea of what payments would be, which houses we can look at it etc without being liable for the fee yeah? 

You can get a good idea of this, for free on comparison sites. Just put in your income, deposit and property value.  You can also play around with the term length, deposit size etc. to see how that affects your monthly payments/affordability.

And if/when you need a new fix, if your current lender is competitive you can just product switch - online and without needing to go through the rigmarole of a full remortgage.

Oh I see, do you know any decent comparison sites worth recommending? Tbh they gave the impression they would be able to secure a mortgage for us so I think that's why I feel like I should send docs etc over.

uSwitch, MSE probably has a calculator.

Personally I'd do my own homework on likely affordability/ costs before approaching a broker or bank

Maybe if you're a simple case.

Let's try something a bit more involved. You're a contractor with your own limited company. What do you enter in the calculator;-

contract value (day rate x five x 46 or 48) or;
two year averaged salary and dividends from HMRC tax calculations or;
two year averaged salary and share of post-tax net profit from company accounts?

The same goes for variable income like overtime, bonus and commission. Some lenders accept some state benefits, some accept none.

Every lender is different. Without the knowledge to understand each different lender's approach you're likely to get an inaccurate result.