Are all mortgage advisors this bad?

[Popcornshovel]

Cutting a very long story short 😩 We need a very small mortgage, LTV is 82.9% so it’s a great cash deposit we have. I very stupidly paid the upfront fee for the mortgage advisor to arrange this for me over 2 weeks ago. I’m still waiting for an agreement in principle. I’ve sent all the details of earnings and bank statements on 4th June 😩 Yet I’m still waiting and being “ghosted” by the advisor. Managed to speak to him on Tuesday and he said he was off on Wednesday but the banks had requested more information (I feel like he’s taking the piss) I don’t want the mortgage right now as I don’t have a property. I just want AIP and he hasn’t returned my calls or emails since. Should I contact agency that he is working through or is this completely normal behaviour for an advisor charging £550 up front and being the most sloppy worker I’ve ever come across? 😤

What was the deadline stipulated for the arrangement?

This is not normal behaviour.

is your deposit 82.9% or LTV 82.9%?

an AIP you can do easily yourself online. Do you have complicated circumstances (eg: selfemployed, debt )?

some brokers you don’t have to pay for and you don’t have to use a broker. We paid a broker even though ours was straightforward so we wouldn’t have to fill out the forms ourselves (we were really busy with work at the time) and she came recommended. We paid £250 on completion of the purchase (ie getting the mortgage). Had the purchase not completed (and so we didn’t get the mortgage) we would not have had to pay.

This is poor. My broker sorts AIP very quickly.

I'm sorry to hear, this situation sounds stressful. My experience has been quite different. When I went through the process, there were no upfront fees and we'll only begin paying fees when we start paying the mortgage. The AIP was provided as soon as we sent in all the necessary documents and the process moved quickly - I believe we received the AIP the following day. My suggestion would be to contact the agency to get a better understanding of where things currently stand. Good luck!

Not normal, no. My mortgage advisor is super quick and really helpful.

We a!ways use London & country, all online or over phone, access to different mortgages and don't pay a penny

always seem to get cash back too when we've gone through them

@Housingdestressnotdistress my deposit is 82.9% sorry about that 😖 I’m stressing lol. No complicated circumstances both employed and both have small car loans both together is around £12k but can’t see that being an issue. I just thought the agreement would have come rather swiftly then obviously the mortgage application would take longer? It’s bizarre how time is going by and he’s not getting in touch and just ignoring my texts and emails. @WuTangGran deadlines for an agreement? He didn’t he just said he would “get straight on it” i imagined that it would come pretty quickly to give us an idea but I was wrong lol. @HappyHedgehog247 my friend said the same. Her AIP came the same day through email. I’m over two weeks waiting. @ChimChimeny i used country wide as the EA recommended then and I’m unsure whether they are good or not. Using this as an example I would say pretty poor. I’m super efficient with stuff like that and he’s just sloppy! @AuntieSoap mine is about as helpful as a chocolate teapot. I sent two emails asking for confirmation of my previous emails and still awaiting a response…. That was 2 weeks ago. @Fifi80 Thank you 😊 I’ve just tried to call but it’s closed for the weekend so I will make it a priority to call on Monday morning 😞

Like Chim we use London and Country, they are free and always timely with mortgage deals.

Agreed somehow, I have manage to pay two fees to Sequence and Connells, who are both owned by the same organisations I really must get round questioning that. £1200 they’ve had anyway. I wouldn’t use either of them again, stick with the above.

Do you mean decision in principle, specific from one particular lender? With lenders pulling and recalculating rates all over the place, I can see it could take a while to get it back. As to ghosting you, well that's just rude. But brokers are under a massive amount of pressure at the moment - but that doesn't excuse blanket silence.

We got AIPs either the same or next day from (free) brokers in April and May, but things have far more crazy since then.

We’ve never paid a mortgage broker despite having complicated finances (DH self employed and I earn a lot of commission on top of my salary).
If all you need is an AIP you can get this for free in minutes online.

Did you sign an agreement with this adviser or have they legged it with your cash?

My son is buying now
he is with London & County
no fee brokers
they gave him an AIP straight away but they did have his details from a previous application from last summer where the house sale fell through

Sounds like you've been scammed. I've also used L&C a number of times and can't knock them.

If you email mine at 6pm on a Friday he responds at 8.30am Saturday and apologises for the delay.

We had a broker who did nothing, ignored my calls, stalled us, asked for more info, then asked for the same info again until I had enough and just told him to return all our documents- which he did, with inadequate postage so it cost me £.
Luckily I hadn’t paid him anything.
I approached another broker who got us an AIP within days and it all went very smoothly. The new broker later admitted that he assumed it was a tricky case which is why the other broker didn’t want it but he was pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t an issue at all.
Our fix came to an end and he managed to get us another good deal.
So basically you’ve just got a dud broker

Never pay an upfront fee for a broker. They shouldn't charge until you're making the full application. We got an AIP 3 days after our initial discussion with broker and haven't paid anything yet.

You don’t normally pay a broker? They get commission from the mortgage company you go with. At least this is the way mine works.

This OP.
I checked several mortgage brokers both paid and free. No upfront fee.

Sounds like a scam to me

Always have an independent ifa to do your mortgage. My husband is one so in fairness I know even he is struggling with lenders responding in a timely manner. Some lenders have a 25 day turn around ri resound to an email!!!

Yours should be communicating with you though.

Apparently if you're borrowing under £100K iirc, the commission they get is so minute they always charge a fee - although only at application stage not AIP stage!

£550! I would try to cancel for a refund. Get AIP yourself online.

I recently found out mortgage andvisors also get paid by the lender 0.35-0.4% of the loan. Hence why so many of them seem to lean on people getting 2 year fixes. Over the life of a 25 year product that’s 12 potential sets of fees rather than 5 if they encouraged 5 year fixes.

I've also never paid for a mortgage advisor? When getting our first mortgage and remortgaging since. I didn't know it was a thing to pay for one.

5 days later….. and I’m still waiting for my agreement in principle! 😞 or even a bloody budget of what we can borrow! I feel like he’s waiting for the maximum increase in interest rates. 😤

When we bought 5yr ago we used a broker from connells and it cost £500 but was for lifetime use.

Ours was excellent so when they set up on their own we stuck with them. Since then we have used them twice more and have had excellent advice and work. And they honoured the lifetime use which they didn't need to do (we could have stayed with connells).

Enquiries are answered almost immediately and the recommendations for solicitors, EA and surveyors has been spot on.

I'd go to the manager of yours and ask what's going on, maybe request a different broker in the firm