How do I get in touch with one? Do they charge and if so how much? Anything else I should know?

In all honesty they can’t do anything for you that you can’t do yourself.

Charge can vary depending on how they make their money. If you can find one that takes a fee from the mortgage company then it might be worth it. However you are likely to find the arrangement fee to be bigger…wonder why that is….?

We visited one who claimed special rates, was very in your face and persuasive. I walked out and found a better deal on the highstreet in 10 mins. Not worth the time IMO.

unless you have specfic unusual needs /circumstances they probably wont help
Consultation is free so see what they can do then shop around.

Mortgage Advisors? Salesmen?

We used one 3 years ago to get us our current deal and I was of this opinion

In all honesty they can’t do anything for you that you can’t do yourself.

and this

unless you have specfic unusual needs /circumstances they probably wont help

But she was able to get a deal with the Halifax that was 0.5% better than anything they advertised, and when I spoke to them direct, they weren’t prepared to give me the same deal. It was cheaper to pay her the commission than it was to do it ourselves, and as she worked on commission, it was worth speaking to her just to see. She was also very honest with us and pointed out that our current (at the time) mortgage providers, YBS, wouldn’t pay her anything so it was worth us dealing with them directly.
Turned out to be well worth it.

We’ve had one for a while. Keep getting fixed rates for 3 years, and then he pops up at the end and helps sort another. TBH I haven’t compared how I’d do on my own, but I really don’t have the time to phone loads of people, and find the whole thing a chore. He doesn’t charge us anything, and the rates seem to be good so I’m happy.

On the downside, he’s incredibly boring and all meetings last well over an hour.

I’m just in the process of switching my mortgage. The only mortgage advisor I contacted wanted me to get a mortgage from ING Direct. So I went to ING Direct, errr, directly, and got a better product for a lower interest rate and no charge.

(EDIT: must get those forms signed today!).

get one that doesn’t charge a fee, the one i’m using just gets paid by who he places the mortgage with, makes him more hungry for a deal!

A family friend of ours used to be a mortgage advisor but has packed it in in the last year or so. He says he used to get preferential rates over the public (which he did for our last mortgage 2 years ago) and would know where to go if you needed fast track/ self cert mortgages. However none of this now apperently exists. We then spoke to another IFA who was very honest and said he could arrange stuff but he couldn’t get anything better than we could ourselves and he would have to charge.

In the end we have remortgaged with HSBC with no fees what so ever. Be careful lots of companies are charging huge fees at the minute!

Ours had contacts in one of the mortgage suppliers to managed to get us a good rate when the offer had actually ended the day before. Gave us some good advice re entry and exit fees (which I’m sure we would have worked out anyway to be fair).

If you live with an hour of your life talking to an advisor they at least might be able to point you at mortgage lenders you hadn’t thought of. Of course nothing stpping you spending your entire day trawling internet/banks to find all the good deals…

For us, because our mortgage is comparatively small, even if a mortgage advisor could get a slightly better rate it doesn’t offset the fees they charge.

What fees? They used to get it back off the mortgage lender, not the buyer.

London and Country Mortgage advisors highly recommended. Did my last mortgage, and currently finishing off my new one.

They technically don’t do anything you couldn’t do, but I still think they are invaluable – they can call people within the mortgage company to check stuff out before applying, or making changes. They can also coordinate a lot of paperwork and all sorts of stuff that would take me weeks to do/understand.

Didn’t cost me anything; they get around £700 from the lender.

Oh, and they are ‘whole of market’ and ‘independent’, which are protected phrases which mean that they won’t and can’t screw you. They have to give you the best deal (regardless of the kickback) and they see all the deals available.

Dave

Even if you go to a mortgage advisor it’s still worth looking in the high street banks as they often don’t give out their best deals through agents.

Mortgage advisors or “brokers” are no different to any other service/or goods that you buy through a broker. There are many different types of brokerage companies that sell to the end user. For example

Mobile Phone Shops (Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U etc) – You buy a phone from them and they receive a commission from the mobile operator.

High Street Insurance Brokers (A Plan, Swinton etc) – You buy an insurance product through them and the insurance company pay them a commission

Price comparison sites (Compare the Market, Confused, Go compare etc) -These are just the modern equivalent of the high street insurance broker.

All the brokerage models work because they offer a mass route to market for the providers. In theory the providors have less costs and overheads by using this route, as they don’t need to open their own retail outlet/office in each town. However to make the brokerage models work the brokers need to be able to offer better deals to the customer than they would get, if they went direct to the provider. If they didn’t nobody would use brokers.

In some cases now, the brokers (especially mortgage brokers) are now charging their customers a fee, this is because they are now earning less commission from the providers.

If you do go and see a mortgage broker, they will also try and cross sell (Income protection insurance, life insurance, home insurance, wills, conveyancing etc)