How accurate are the online mortgage calculators?

[TrixchangeK]

Just that really - I know they're a "quick quote", but do the figures they give tend to be fairly accurate for the maximum a lender would agree to?

They’re just a rough guide. If you’re hoping to borrow a larger amount, it’s best to find a good mortgage advisor. They’ll be familiar with a range of products from different banks as well as how different banks view certain sources of income etc so they can find a suitable product.

In my experience the actual amount offered will be less. The only one I've found to be spot on was First Direct. (I have no link with FD btw!)

Pretty accurate for us, actually ended up getting a little bit more (about another £5k) than predicted but I think that's because I was taking out nursery fees whereas our Mortgage Advisor told us we didnt need to declare that as it was already assumed when we said how many dependants we had.

They tend to be overly generous. Pretty accurate but once the lender has been through your spending and job contracts etc I think they often come out a bit less.

Not very - they were all 50-80k more than we could actually get in our experience, which was pretty disappointing!

I have found them on the lower side and have been able to borrow more than general calculators and around what my bank said I could.

If you use a calculator designed for mortgage brokers, you can get a very good idea of what you would be offered. Our mortgage broker always used Natwest as a starting point to give a figure.

rbsintermediaries.hdddirectsolutions.co.uk/Natwest

Interesting to get such varied responses! The online ones (including that intermediary one) are all coming out about £50k ish more than we need to borrow, so hopefully we should be OK

Thank you everybody!

That intermediary one came out less than what I was approved for last week and I wasn't at maximum borrowing!

We were offered a lot more than we took - iirc the difference was about £80k!

They weren’t very accurate at all for ours. We were looking for a mortgage broker who would offer a larger amount and we really thought we wouldn’t get it after doing all the online calculators but we got there in the end by phoning a higher lender.

SouthMouth what was the name if the lender?

I didn't look at a calculator before talking to our mortgage broker but I just looked up the calculator for where our mortgage is (Halifax) and it is exactly accurate.