5 weeks and no mortgage in place yet. HSBC or broker the problem?

[larkstar]

I was just talking to my daughter and she's been telling me about the frustrations of trying to secure a mortgage through a broker - it's been 5 weeks now with no sign of one being put in place - the problem, she is now thinking, is that it might be due to HSBC who have recently been heavily fined over mismanagement of mortgage applications (she says, I'll go an look this up in a minute). Both her and her partner have secure well paid jobs however - they have just come back from travelling a lot over the past year - a long overdue break after 6 years of university and 3 years post graduate on-going training - so they don't have a full year of financial history - but she's just started another 2 year phase of her career. They have considerable savings for the deposit.

Does anyone know what is going on in the mortgage market ATM and why it seems so slow and hard to get one? They seem to me to be putting to much trust in their one mortgage advisor - I've said I'd be inclined to start looking at other ways to land a mortgage but even getting an appointment with a building society to talk about a mortgage is taking 3 weeks (she says) so they are just in limbo and stressed about it as they don't want their house purchase to fall through. Any advice for us?

TIA

We recently applied for a mortgage through First Direct who are part of the HSBC group. Every single stage of it made me
lose the will to live.

HSBC are notoriously risk adverse. If I had to hazard a guess I would say the bank are more likely to be the problem than the broker.

FWIW we have excellent credit ratings and were borrowing approx half of what we could, it really should not have been so painful.

I don’t think I will ever go back to FD or HSBC because I like to have an easier life.

Last year through a broker with Nationwide: everything was sorted within in two days.

Is he definitely a whole of market broker or a mortgage advisor with HSBC?
I would get her to look at a brokering company such as SPF Finance or Alexander Hall there should be literally hundreds of mortgages available to your daughter & partner but I’m just a punter maybe an expert will be along in a minute who will know more than me. There’s just been a rate cut as well which is good for them

Is there a reason why the mortgage broker can't look at other lenders instead if HSBC are being a pain?

I've recently had a mortgage offer from Leeds Building Society. It took just over a week for the application to be approved and a few more days for the offer to arrive in the post. 5 weeks is madness and I can see why your daughter is panicking.

@Mynewhome2024 actually they are in Leeds! Live there, studied there, buying a house there. I believe the broker isn't tied to HSBC and can look at others it's just that that was there particular mortgage deal they were most interested in. It's their first time through this loop so obviously they don't have the experience to know if they are getting good service or is they should be demanding more and asking more questions: I'm simply older and less patient/understanding.

I'm glad I've had these replies so they line up with what I was suggesting.

Forgot to mention, First Direct are also our bank, so have direct access to our financial history for 2.5 years.

And still I was so frustrated at the speed of the process and their absurd scripts that the conversation I had with the OH is ‘I don’t want to give them my money, I know they have the best rate but I would rather go with someone else who are less tedious to deal with. I can’t bear the thought of dealing with them for the next five years.’

Incidentally, when mortgage rates started going sky high and banks got nervous about changes in people’s affordability, HSBC were the ones I was most often reading about pulling mortgage rates at the last minute, and refusing mortgages left right and centre. People having problems with mortgages cropped up quite often on here, and it was often HSBC.

The mistake their broker made was not telling them they’re not the easiest to deal with. The easiest seem to be Nationwide, which is partly why so many brokers recommend their mortgages. The brokers know the process will be a walk in the park.

I'm a mortgage broker. Currently I'm not aware of any issues with HSBC and only spoke to their Business Development manager last Thursday about their rates & updated terms.

It's not clear from your OP @larkstar if your DD have actually applied to HSBC yet or not. Nowdays 99.9% of mortgage applications are submitted online and can be done within the hour. Usually then the broker is asked to upload the required documents (pay slips, bank statements, evidencexof deposit & ID) and usually just the last 3 months payslips & bank statements are needed.

First thing in the morning your DD needs to speak to her mortgage broker and ask if this has been done. Currently there are some better deals around than with HSBC, but that may all depend on what LTV your DD is at.

On another note, as interest rates are falling most lenders will let you change to a lower rate before exchange, even if a mortgage offer had been issued. So no need to be waiting around for a cut in rates of that is why there is any delay. I've got a client doing a rate switch with The Coventry and we've change it 4 times over the past 2 months. Its gone from the original 5.13% down to 4.73%.

HSBC are notoriously risk adverse.

That is funny because HSBC were the most generous for both our mortgages. By a considerable amount!

One did drop 30k at the last minute due to underwriter referral. But it was still more than others were willing to lend.

Oh, they fight over that. One year one bank told us we could have x2.5 then two years later a different bank wanted to lend us x5.5 my partner’s sole household income salary when he had had no pay rise for two years and his bonus was half the size.

You might as well stick your finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing to guess which bank will lend you what at any given moment.

Mad isnt it!

Well very grateful 🤣 Thank you HSBC. We love the house.

Disagree.

Most lenders are fairly consistent with their lending criteria & I can usually give you the top 5 lenders in terms of maximum borrowing limits. Some will change their criteria from time to time, and quite a few will lend professionals (doctors, lawyers, solicitors etc) at least 5x income when the norm is maxed at 4.5.

I am loathe to disagree with you because you do this for a living but one year Nationwide would lend us 280k then the next they suddenly pulled another 185k out of the bag and offered us a 33 year term. We have no DC so nothing to do with childcare changes. No salary changes. Increased cost of living. Only difference between the two years was the second one was through a broker. And at 95% LTV to boot.

We were surprised given how prudent they were in the past.

My award for most greedy lender has to go to NatWest though. What the broker said they would give us (at our not at all young ages) last November made me curse in disgust.

But then NatWest always chucked credit at me left right and centre when they were my bank, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Idk what Nationwide’s game is. I guess they want to be no. 1? Shrug.

Edit: the OH is in tech. Not management level. Not currently a good sector to work in for pay rises or job certainty.

If it's any comfort, took me about 30 days recently (June to July this year) with Nationwide.

Me & broker went back & forth about details on WhatsApp most days during that period. My funds were spread out over 4 different banks (to protect me in case of bank failure) and it took a while to extract the money-laundering-compliant+official-looking statements off of each bank App.

Also now It's the summer. Half of everyone is on holiday & everything is being progressed slowly. I just had 10 days of struggling to get anyone (estate agent, conveyancer, surveyor) to reply to my queries or attempts at progress. I've still not had proper contact from conveyancer in > 2 weeks now.

I’m guessing the delay is largely to do with the fact your daughter and her partner have just come back from travelling over the past year so may lack the 3 months normal pay slips to prove their normal salary.

HSBC may have referred the file to a different department to check. I would get the broker to ask when they can expect a decision.

Just to play devils advocate Inhave had nothing but excellent and quick service from First Direct and wouldn’t go anywhere else, for mortgage or anything else.

That has been my experience also and I think they all follow certain scripts when discussing mortgage applications - probably have to for legal reasons.

We used first direct to switch deals last year and were fine seamless no hassle.

Is the broker L&C? They were so terribly organised with our purchase last year that the chain nearly collapsed, we ended up phoning the bank directly to resolve and complaining to them and getting compensation.

We would call them and ask them why there was a delay, they would say "oh no idea, let me chase the bank", then the next day we'd call again and they'd say they couldn't get through or standard wait times were 10 days for a certain document to be processed etc. In the end we smelt a rat, called the bank directly who told us that they'd requested additional documentation on something via L&C, which they'd completely failed to even put on our file, let alone tell us. This happened multiple times and it took us nearly 60 days to get the mortgage offer.... it was in the Liz Truss days so nearly cost us a huge amount of money. At one point L&C told us some bullshit about it being a 15 day wait for a certain doc to be reviewed, we phoned the bank, turned out that they wanted a small clarification on something, we provided over the phone and had the offer 15 minutes later... meanwhile L&C had it down that they would sit on our case for 15 days before chasing!!!

They were absolutely awful and I would never use them again. If your DD is using them, I would trust nothing they say and start chasing the bank directly!!!

Last year they took a 1k setup fee out of our account and when we tried to get in touch to say “we told you not to submit the application”, ghosted us for 3 days until my OH tracked down a supervisor.

That was back in the days when I kept money in our current account rather than our savings, which I now don’t. Our OD would not have covered that.

Our broker said HSBC were a nightmare so we went with NatWest. Had a mortgage within 4 days of application going in (that was 2 weeks ago so very recent). Are they able to look at another provider?

We are with First Direct - we bought our first house with them and then ported for our second - and have never had any issues, it was all very smooth and easy.

OP has your daughter actually asked why it’s taking so long??

Hi , can I ask if hsbc gave them one after 6 weeks ? My relatives have sold there house and there buyer has been waiting now this is week 6 and still no decision if they have been given an offer ?

Both my DD (a year ago) and DS (recently) had offers within two weeks.

All their financial information was available and quite easy to provide. They had no particular complications as long work history. They used a broker. It was by far the fastest thing they sorted.

My DD didn't exchange for a few months and rates had dropped a little - They even managed to change it to a lower rate (same lender) close to exchange to save them £30 a month.

I've been impressed by brokers!