The importance of getting good mortgage advice

The more important a decision is, the more important it is to get it right. For the average person, buying a home, even a starter flat, is a huge financial commitment. This means that although the difference between the right mortgage for you and the wrong mortgage for you may boil down to fine details, details you might not even have noticed on your own, those details can make a significant difference to your overall financial wellbeing. What’s more, mortgages can be highly-detailed products, which means that they can be very complicated.

The ”go direct” myth To be fair, there is some truth in the general concept of getting the best price by “going direct” and “cutting out the middle man”. The real problem is that the benefits of it are often massively overstated. In simple terms, “going direct” only has any meaningful advantage when a buyer is totally familiar with the market and knows exactly where to go to get the best deal. Given that everyone has their own unique areas of expertise, there are probably some areas of life where you are fully qualified to “go direct”, but for the average person, finding the right mortgage may not be one of them. Even if you feel confident you understand mortgages in general well enough to understand what sort of product you need, do you really want to spend your own time and energy checking deal after deal to make sure you get the best option? Your time has a value too. A mortgage adviser spends their entire working life dealing with mortgages and therefore can be expected to have a familiarity with them which is way beyond anything non-professionals have the time to achieve.

Mortgage brokers will understand the total cost and overall value of a product While headline interest rates are, of course, a key factor in any financial product, they are not necessarily the only important factor you should consider when deciding whether or not to make a purchase. In terms of mortgages, you will also want to look at the length of the mortgage term, administrative fees, early-exit fees and the schedule of charges and penalties (hopefully you will avoid them, but it’s usually preferable to know what they are). That’s all once you’ve decided whether you want a standard repayment mortgage or an offset mortgage and whether you want a variable-interest-rate product or a fixed-interest-rate-product. If you opt for a fixed-interest-rate product, you’ll also need to think about the length of the fix and have a plan in place for what you intend (or at least would like) to do when the fix comes to an end. In addition to helping you with all of this, your mortgage broker may be able to help with all the “extra” bits, like finding a valuer and/or surveyor and a conveyancer. You might also need life insurance and some form of income-protection cover to ensure that your mortgage is paid even if you’re not available to work.

Mortgage brokers can help with “offbeat” purchases In the context of mortgages “offbeat” can mean anything from self-build mortgages to mortgages for off-plan property, to mortgages on non-standard property such as wooden homes, to homes which lenders may tend to approach with caution, such as homes above commercial property. It can also mean buyers in unusual situations, such as older buyers or expat buyers and off course they can also help with buy-to-let purchases. Even if, however, none of this applies to you, the sheer breadth of knowledge offered by a mortgage broker can be very useful as you may find that the best deal for you is a niche product you would have been highly unlikely to find on your own. Your property may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.