Save Your Mortgage Broker

mpoocat

Hopefully you might read this thread or then again you may have already switched off. Martin is a champion of the consumer I dont doubt for 1 minute the amount of money he may have saved you. He also recommends using a mortgage broker. Let me explain what a mortgage broker is. We are not just brokers. We help you. I am a mortgage broker. This month I have helped a lady who is in the middle of a divorce and has been let down by her current lender, always fobbed off on the phone. She intially contacted them in February, when she called me in desperation at the end of April I helped her sort out her problem in 2 days and she got £100 compensation. We dont charge for our help and advice its free to each and everyone who calls us. We dont discriminate. If we happen to find you a suitable mortgage and we arrange it for you then we get paid a commission by the lender. This is normally about o0.35% of the mortgage loan amount. When you take off the costs for running our business and the cost of our indemnity insurance we actually dont make that much. We do it becuase we like or job and like helping people. At the moment you are probably very concerned about the monthly mortgage payment you have and it may have come as a shock. We would always help you to get the best deal and we have to demonstrate and evidence this on each file for compliance purposes. Martin extolls our advice and many of you who turn to such forums will be wanting help and many advisors fgive their help free on this site. But not for much longer. Lenders are dual pricing in favour of direct business. This means that you might be getting a lower rate but at what cost. Make no mistake about this, the lender will be making a loss on that mortgage and they will want you to buy every other product they offer from pensions to home insurance as this is where they make their money. They get commission on these products too and that is the only reason why they are offering better mortgages direct. Their products are expensive and are not the best and they DO NOT OFFER ADVICE. You may see one of their 'advisors' but someone younger than you working in a bank is not going to have seen what you could get better elsewhere and I should know I used to work for a bank. They do not have your best interests at heart and you WILL end up being another number in a call- centre eventually. A independent financial advisor or mortgage advisor not liked to a bank will always treat you as an individual. If you do as Martin says and take our advice but go direct then I understand your reasons but as this industry is being crippled by the lenders when it goes wrong their maybe no-one to turn to. By all means get a cheaper mortgage but dont be bullied into buying their associated products and please remember they are NOT allowed to imply that the only reason they will say yes to your mortgage is if you take another of their products. THIS IS ILLEGAL and not allowed. Please support your mortgage advisor who will always treat you fairly be on the end of the phone after a couple of rings and come and see you in the evening. If you dont support us, in future there will be no-one on these forums able to give you help, or anyone to help you when things go wrong. We give our advice for free on the basis of trust and relationship. I dont know where the lady would be who I have helped over the past month but she is £100 better off and cannot thank me enough and you know what - it felt good to do that for her even though I made no money. Personal finance and helping other people is my profession not just my job and I enjoy it. Support us and we will continue to champion your rights like Martin, use us and there will be none of us left to help you. Thank you for your time.

Gorgeous_George

Don't you just hate it when the paragraph formatting is lost. It happens to me occasionally.

The only way that I've found to fix it is to enter them manually using

[ /p ] and [ p ]

between each paragraph.

GG

KingofSparta

WELL SAID! my boyfriend is an independant broker and supports his clients throughout the entire process of remortgaging or buying a house. One of his ftb customers is calling him pretty much daily with questions or seeking advice about the whole process of buying their first home. I am sure you wouldnt get that kind of personal service from a bank's call centre halfway across the world

TEDDYRUKSPIN

Paragraphs.

I would hate to read your suitability letter. Ha....

SOLUTION:

Spell checker and paragraphs can help.

money_maker_3

Hang on a minute, but to put in your post that you will not get a personal service from a bank is just STUPID and mis informed. Maybe you were like that when you worked in a branch, but the rest of us are there to help people in the best way that we can.

I work after hours and most Saturdays so that my customers can get what needs done, when it needs done, and I am far from being the only one that I know.

So as long as the bank staff don't start writing posts like this one on brokers, then it is not very fair saying that brokers are better than bank staff either.

Please think before you type next time

homer_j_3

mpoocat wrote: »

Hopefully you might read this thread or then again you may have already switched off.

Martin is a champion of the consumer I dont doubt for 1 minute the amount of money he may have saved you. He also recommends using a mortgage broker. Let me explain what a mortgage broker is. We are not just brokers. We help you. I am a mortgage broker. This month I have helped a lady who is in the middle of a divorce and has been let down by her current lender, always fobbed off on the phone. She intially contacted them in February, when she called me in desperation at the end of April I helped her sort out her problem in 2 days and she got £100 compensation. We dont charge for our help and advice its free to each and everyone who calls us. We dont discriminate. If we happen to find you a suitable mortgage and we arrange it for you then we get paid a commission by the lender. This is normally about o0.35% of the mortgage loan amount.

When you take off the costs for running our business and the cost of our indemnity insurance we actually dont make that much. We do it becuase we like our job and like helping people. At the moment you are probably very concerned about the monthly mortgage payment you have and it may have come as a shock. We would always help you to get the best deal and we have to demonstrate and evidence this on each file for compliance purposes.

Martin extolls our advice and many of you who turn to such forums will be wanting help and many advisors give their help free on this site. But not for much longer. Lenders are dual pricing in favour of direct business. This means that you might be getting a lower rate but at what cost. Make no mistake about this, the lender will be making a loss on that mortgage and they will want you to buy every other product they offer from pensions to home insurance as this is where they make their money. They get commission on these products too and that is the only reason why they are offering better mortgages direct. Their products are expensive and are not the best and they DO NOT OFFER ADVICE.

You may see one of their 'advisors' but someone younger than you working in a bank is not going to have seen what you could get better elsewhere and I should know I used to work for a bank. They do not have your best interests at heart and you WILL end up being another number in a call- centre eventually. A independent financial advisor or mortgage advisor not linked to a bank will always treat you as an individual. If you do as Martin says and take our advice but go direct then I understand your reasons but as this industry is being crippled by the lenders when it goes wrong there maybe no-one to turn to.

By all means get a cheaper mortgage but dont be bullied into buying their associated products and please remember they are NOT allowed to imply that the only reason they will say yes to your mortgage is if you take another of their products. THIS IS ILLEGAL and not allowed.

Please support your mortgage advisor who will always treat you fairly be on the end of the phone after a couple of rings and come and see you in the evening. If you dont support us, in future there will be no-one on these forums able to give you help, or anyone to help you when things go wrong.

We give our advice for free on the basis of trust and relationship. I dont know where the lady would be who I have helped over the past month but she is £100 better off and cannot thank me enough and you know what - it felt good to do that for her even though I made no money.

Personal finance and helping other people is my profession not just my job and I enjoy it. Support us and we will continue to champion your rights like Martin, use us and there will be none of us left to help you. Thank you for your time.

I have paragraphed it and corrected some spelling/grammer too.Makes it easier on the eye.

Personally, I am all up for the rallying call of highlighting the benefits of using a professional intermediary but I think your point gets lost along the way by focusing on the tactics employed by banks.

It is true of any adviser who is employed - they will be targeted to sell because the person paying them needs them to justify their worth of that pay. Its not just banks but it could be brokers too. To say that someone younger than you will not know what they are doing, I find quite insulting and ageist. You could easily get a 45 yr old coming into the business with no experience and someone who is 25 that has been doing the job since they were 18.

People should use brokers, people should look for good brokers where they are not able or confident in arranging a mortgage. The decrease in business should be expected in todays climate. I read that in 2006 and 2007, net lending was around £110bn. This year it is forecast that the net lending will be somewhere near £60bn. This is a 45% shrinkage of money available to lend in 1 year.

Due to consumer demand and those that have money being more choosey. Supply and demand laws dictate that deals will continue to get more expensive whilst this is the case. It almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. On this basis, business to the lenders branch networks will be reducing, the lenders are going to look after number 1.

Your campaign to save your broker is a good idea but I think it needs to be better propositioned and whilst the global credit crunch continues, things are not going to change. Had house prices dropped and lenders not tightened up, we all would have been busier than ever.

selectcase

It was a broker on this forum that put me in touch the a bank that would finance my self build when other so called "specialists" in the self build market had led me a merry dance and i had been turned down. So I will be contacting that broker when i need to remortgage to a standard product in a few months time. Brokers do provide valuable advice - just make sure you get a decent one - one from one of the forums would be a good idea i should think.

_Andy_

As a broker I obviously emphasise with the feeling in this uncertain time.

However, as someone who used to work at a bank and has friends working as bank advisers both in-branch and telephone-based, I find some of your comments offensive and ill-informed. E.g. "You may see one of their 'advisors' but someone younger than you working in a bank is not going to have seen what you could get better elsewhere and I should know I used to work for a bank." -

Why on earth is the adviser's age of any relevance? How do you know they won't have 'seen what you could get better elsewhere'? Admittedly they're not there to advise on other company's products but you seem to imply that as they're tied to one lender they will have no market knowledge.

I'm sure your post has the best of intentions with regards to supporting brokers however the staunchly anti-bank attitude is quite grating.

Dan_Collins_2

Bank staff in my opinion can be very good, however they have targets for everything and IMHO they put these before the clients needs. I know this as I did when I was in a branch and was why I left. However Branch staff have a salary and are not being forced out of a market.

Things are getting better but I think by the end of this year a lot will have given up and this will include the good ones. We have lost a good broker this week, he is going to work for the devil, I mean a bank, and I have my CV ready and waiting.

When we are gone and the client is left in the hands of the bank people will be crying out for us!

A little dramatic but I am in the mood for a drama LOL

minimike2

I cant even be bothered to read most of it to be honest.

homer_j_3

Dan,

I would normally laugh at drama but its not drama, its reality. I am looking to expand and make use of my FPC's again having not used them for a long time. At the ripe old age of 28 and been in the industry since I was 16, I am not yet quite ready to give up on what I love.

I wouldn't be surprised if pure mortgage broker numbers reduced by 50% over the next 12-24 months. There will of course be IFAs who come into pure mortgages when RDR kicks in but they will be holding off for aslong as possible, I imagine.