It’s still tough out there..

Getting a mortgage application through a lender in the current climates can still be challenging. One day it appears relatively easy, yet the next, it’s a nightmare! So whatever you do, try to not give lenders any excuses to decline your application or refuse to lend to you. Try to pay bills on time, don’t miss payments where possible and especially not mortgage payments! Any missed (or sometimes late) payments will be registered on your credit file and this is normally used as the basis of a decision to lend to you. Remember that most Insurance companies and mobile phone providers carry out credit searches on people before issuing their products. Try not to incur too many searches in a short space of time. This can also be detrimental to your credit score.

When choosing who to speak to about your mortgage, ensure that the company you are talking to, whether it be a mortgage broker, or an Estate Agents in-house mortgage adviser, has access to the ‘whole of market’ and not just a fixed panel of lenders. If they do not have access to the whole of market, they may not be offering you the best deal available to meet your requirements.

Finally, for some months, a few of the smaller specialist lenders have been offering existing borrowers ‘golden goodbyes’ to assist them in remortgaging away to another Lender. This tends to be a cost effective way for the lender to lower their exposure and re-capitalise over exposed mortgage books, or so we are led to believe! In some instances, the incentive to the borrower to move away has been thousands of pounds. We are aware of some discounting by tens of thousands or up to 25% of the current loan amount! Quite simply, some lenders are happy to pay
substantial amounts to say goodbye! Other lenders have waived early redemption charges on some loans to encourage borrowers to move their mortgage elsewhere. This fad seems to be on the increase again. If your mortgage is a with a small specialist lender, who you know are no longer actively trading, a call to them could be very worthwhile and could decrease your mortgage amount, term and payments!