AIP question

[jaffacakesareabiscuit]

Hi, would appreciate advice from those who've gone through this selling and buying process before as I'm a newbie!

We're just about to put our house on the market, photos being taken Tuesday morning so should be up later in the week. Exciting!

I know we should have an AIP to show estate agents etc that we are serious buyers, my question is do we just apply for one online ourselves now or should I get a mortgage broker at this stage? Is there any advantage/disadvantage to just picking a mortgage lender and applying for the AIP ourselves? I do plan to get the help of a mortgage broker for the actual application!

Hi OP. As someone who has very recently gone through the process I would say definitely get the broker now if you plan on using one.

Our AIP call (we were porting an existing mortgage so couldn’t do it online) took 2 hours and we needed to provide basically everything that we later needed to provide for our full application.

I think most lenders will want you to do an AIP before they will do a full application anyway so it will save effort if you only need to do it once. Also as mortgage underwriters are really snowed under at the moment and mortgages are taking months to approve you could save yourself time overall if you go with the right lender now.

Good luck, exciting times ahead!

Thanks @SollaSollew that makes sense!

I'm in NI so not sure how long mortgages are taking at the minute, but I know the estate agent said that the biggest delay is getting the title deeds from the bank so we should request that as soon as our house sells and we have instructed our solicitor for the onward purchase.

Exciting times indeed, but scary too! It seems a lot more complicated than when I bought as a first time buyer