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If you have 2 people's incomes, very straightforward and completely clean credit, no outgoings, then the likelihood is you can get a mortgage with pretty much anyone as long as you are within your means and just apply for the lowest rate lender you can find.
Once you get outside the norms, maternity leave, dependants, maintenance, income stretches, loans, credit cards, background properties, credit issues, age, employment status, bonuses, overtime, allowances, then as every lender treats them differently a decent broker is worth paying for.
If you have the time to do the admin yourself, by all means. If you apply for yourself, you won't have access to the lenders criteria in full, unless you speak to a full adviser for the bank, at which point the process in general will be painful and seriously delayed. If you get declined, how much time will you have to resource the market yourself and then convince your seller that you know what you are doing?
Certain lenders decline up to 3 or 4 in 10 applications, and might take up to 4 weeks to let you know this.
Mortgages can get declined for simple things like recent pay day loans, too much time spent in overdraft, loan to income ratio, being downwind of a takeaway, lease durations being too short, and all sorts of other reasons that lenders don't advertise readily.Also realistically you get maybe up to 3-4 application attempts with lenders due to credit searches, and lenders sharing background declined information, and vendor patience.
Best to try and get it right first time.For full disclosure, I'm a fee charging mortgage broker, and I believe that my time, expertise and efficiency is worth my fee. As many people have found, as long as you find a good broker, they can reduce stress, find solutions, speak to estate agents, solicitors on your behalf, save you time and find you a good deal. I see a lot of clients who have gone direct to lenders and after being turned down, have needed help getting things back on track ASAP.
Only if the case demands it. If you have regular finances it will probably not, and the broker simply acts as the pre-sales and sales department of the provider as MMR pretty much requires them to do.
As before: in some cases a super-specialist fee charging pro broker will be helpful! For the rest of us they will not be worth the top-up fee because they are simply not providing any additional value beyond administerial.
Before MMR the internet nearly killed 'em off.
Huh. Yeah. Of course, and some services are charged at different rates than others because they are more valuable. Basic mortgage origination is pretty darn cheap once you have the hardware and the marketing end sorted out :)