What Does A Mortgage Broker Do?
- Access to competitive rates and some you can't get direct
- You will not be pushed from one adviser to another
- Quality, professional mortgage advice that you can trust
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What Does A Mortgage Broker Do?
What does a mortgage broker do?
It’s probably quicker to tell you what we don’t do. The idea is they should be doing as much as possible for the client.
Buying a property is probably the most stressful experience you’ll ever have, and if we can carry that load, we’re doing something good for our clients.
Obviously there are financials involved as well. We want to get people the best deal – not necessarily the best rate, but the most appropriate deal and keep their costs to a minimum.
With so many products out there, it’s important that the advice is right. The products are all different, so it’s our job to get you the best possible deal and the right deal – that’s the most important thing.
What’s the difference between going to a mortgage broker and your local high street lender?
When you go to a broker, you’re going to somebody who can access the whole of the mortgage market, rather than restricting yourself to one particular high street lender.
In effect, your broker is walking up and down the high street and through back alleys to other lenders that you’ve never heard of, to get you the best rates and terms.
We’ll be reviewing the options from the whole of the market rather than just one or two lenders that you’ve visited in the high street.
Also, when you have a discussion with a mortgage advisor in a bank or building society, you’ll be there for two or three hours each time. It’s quite a prescriptive process.
When you talk to a mortgage broker, you’ll just be having that one discussion. We then go off and use information we’ve gathered to talk to the lenders and come up with the best rates and terms for you.
What services does a mortgage broker offer?
Certainly in a purchase, we are a central contact point. Not only will you be dealing with a mortgage broker, but also an estate agent and a solicitor. We can speak to all of those for you.
Before you even get to that point, you’re probably going to want an ‘Agreement in Principle’ – it’s a very good indication of whether a bank will lend to you and how much. Then, when you go and view properties you can show that agreement to an estate agent. When you make an offer they know you can then crack on with a full mortgage application.
Obviously, not everything is a purchase. You’ve also got remortgages. We even do ‘product transfers’ which is like remortgaging with your current lender. As your rate comes up to its end we can sort all of that out.
We will actually diarise that and keep in touch with you on that. It’s part of the service we offer here. We’ve got a rate assurance guarantee – we can reserve a rate for you, as it could take several months before your mortgage completes. If that lender’s rate improves by the time your new mortgage starts, we will get you on it. So, you get the best available at that time.
We also do mortgage protection – all the insurances that go with your mortgage, such as life assurance. It’s also not just residential mortgages. We can do Buy to Let as well. If you’re buying properties as an investment or remortgaging them, we can do those.
Other things include commercial finance, if you want to purchase the property that your business occupies, and we can look at second charge advances. You might be looking to borrow for home improvements and your residential lender can’t assist for whatever reason. We can help there. Plus, if you’re in a desperate hurry and the circumstances are right, we can consider bridging finance for you.
When should I see a mortgage broker?
Just as soon as you start thinking about a mortgage. You might be looking to buy a property in the next couple of years, or you’ve started to save for your first property. Talk to a broker early on, as we can give you a good idea of how much you can borrow and what it will cost.
Between those two figures we can set your expectations for the type of property you might be able to buy. We can make you aware of the different schemes available to help you get on the property ladder – especially if you’re a First Time Buyer.
So talk to a broker as soon as it’s possible that you might want to buy a property. If you want to talk to us about your existing mortgage, get in touch six to seven months before your rate expires. It sounds a long time in the future, but that’s a good time to get the ball rolling and understand what your payments might look like when your existing deal expires.
With First Time Buyers particularly, clients come along with a lot of misconceptions. They’ve had the wrong advice about needing a bigger deposit or that they can only borrow three times their income. Or possibly it’s the other way round – they think they can borrow seven times their income.
By speaking to us earlier you might find you could do this sooner than you thought – or you need to save for a little bit longer.
Speak To an Expert
When was Davidson and Deem founded and how long have you been working in the industry?
Peter: The company was formed by the original Davidson and Deem in 1989. I joined in 1997 so I’ve been here for almost 27 years. Prior to that I worked in Barclays as the head mortgage specialist for the west of Dorset.
I soon realised that I could only help some customers, and that I would much rather work for a broker where I could use all the lenders and help far more people.
Brian: I joined on April Fools Day 2001, and 22 and a half years later I’m still here and enjoying it. My background was in NatWest, where I had 15 years learning how to lend money in all different shapes and sizes.
Then Pete approached me to see if I wanted to come and work with him. Between the five members of staff here, we’ve got well over 150 years of mortgage-related experience – there’s a lot of knowledge to rely on.
Does it cost for an initial consultation with the team?
No, it doesn’t. We don’t charge fees for advice. We charge £400 if you want our assistance with purchasing a property, remortgaging your property or borrowing additional money from your current lender.
That fee is only payable as and when we secure you a formal, committed written mortgage offer on a specific property. If we don’t get you the offer, you don’t pay us a penny. You’ll never get an invoice from us if we fail to achieve what you’re looking for.
We discount that fee of £400 to £200 for First Time Buyers and again, you only pay once we get a formal offer on the property you want to buy.
We don’t charge for rate assurance, where we will swap you onto a new rate with your existing lender if that’s the right thing to do. It doesn’t matter how many times we lower the rate – I think with one client we reserved a rate six months early and we dropped it eight times before it actually started. Although we did eight times as much work then, we don’t charge a penny in those circumstances.
Sometimes we’re battling with lenders and underwriters to get that deal through – that’s the kind of work that eventually will result in a fee. But if your rate’s ending and we’re putting you on another one, you don’t pay at all.
Is there anything else you’d like us to know about mortgage brokers and what you do?
If you’re in any doubt, look at our Google reviews. We’ve got over 300 and they are all five stars. They are genuinely all real – we just ask our clients if they would like to leave a review.
I’ve got one family where we’re on the third generation – I’m helping the grandson of the original customer from 25 years ago. It does make you feel old, but that loyalty is fantastic and it does make me proud. Those Google reviews do show that we basically are really good at what we do.
If there’s anything slightly unusual about your circumstances, we can help. Perhaps you’re a doctor and you have various different parts to your total income package – on-call allowance, weekend allowance and so on… lenders’ systems don’t really understand how your total income can be made up. A good broker that specialises in the professional sector like ourselves would come into their own here.
Or perhaps you’re self-employed – lenders are very much geared up for dealing with employed people on a basic salary. If you’re a sole trader or limited company director and you own more than 15% of the shares in your company, there are about 16 different ways that lenders use to assess your income. It will vary massively from lender to lender. A good broker has a solid grounding in how lenders actually assess income levels for different people.
Please note: Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up with your mortgage repayments.
