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Best Mortgage Advisor – A Mortgage Now

What is a mortgage advisor?

A mortgage advisor is a person who is regulated and licensed to give advice and make recommendations on mortgages.

What does a mortgage advisor do?

In order to become regulated to operate, the advisor needs to pass a series of examinations and then be monitored at work to confirm they are competent (and continue to be competent) to give the correct advice to the borrower.

Mortgage advisors can work within a Bank or Building Society providing information and advice to borrower simply on that Bank’s mortgage products.

An independent mortgage advisor (often called a mortgage broker) does not work with a single mortgage lender. Instead, they give advice and recommendations on products from Lenders across the whole of the market.

Is it worth going to an independent mortgage advisor?

If you approach an independent advisor rather than going direct to a Bank or Building Society you benefit from:

  • Access to mortgage products from across the UK market
  • Independent advice

    The result is access to mortgage products that may be more suitable and less expensive for you.

Our mortgage experts provide our service online so you can get the help and advice you need without meetings, without paperwork, and without fuss.

Is it free to speak to a mortgage advisor?

Advisors are usually happy to have an initial conversation with you at no cost.

Often, an advisor will charge fees (known as Broker Fees) for certain elements of their work. You need not worry however as the Regulator precludes any mortgage advisor from charging you without their first outlining their terms and fees to you, and you agreeing to them.

Our Terms are set out here

How do I choose the best mortgage advisor?

As with most services, a recommendation is typically a good way to identify the best mortgage advisor. Particularly if you have a friend with similar circumstances to you who has recently gone through the mortgage application process.

Many people use the internet to find suitable help. A good quality brokerage will have a number of reviews of it’s services on independent sites such as Trustpilot and Google.

You can see our recent reviews here:

Can I change my mortgage advisor?

We sometimes get enquiries from borrowers who have started the mortgage application process direct with a Lender, or via another mortgage advisor, but are not getting the result they want.

Whether it is worth ‘changing horses mid race’ depends very much on what the issue is.

Sometimes, the borrower is simply is not in a position to achieve what they had hoped – if that is the case a quality business would let you know upfront and directly.

If the issue is about speed of response, changing advisors may not help at all and may make matters even slower. Applications with mortgage lenders can often be painfully slow no matter who is handling them.

Sometimes, the borrower has simply chosen the wrong advisor who does not have the experience, knowledge, or tools at their disposal for the best result. In these cases another mortgage advisor may be your best bet.

One thing to avoid is having two mortgage applications going on in two directions at the same time, this can cause you serious issues.

Specialist mortgage advice and how we can help

As a mortgage advisor, it is important that our knowledge keeps pace with the requirements of our clients. There are a number of areas that can prove particularly tricky for a mortgage applicant, and we pride ourselves on understanding how best to navigate them.

Self Employed Mortgage Advisor

It can be unusually difficult for a self-employed applicant to arrange a mortgage as each lender has their own view on what income can be considered for affordability calculations. A good mortgage advisor can help you to find the right lender, and to navigate the application process. Most lenders require three years trading history and will average out income over three years, whereas others will work on two years history, and some on one year; a financial mortgage advisor will know this information

Where self-employed income has increased, there are some mortgage lenders that will consider the most recent year’s income only rather than averaging two or three years.

Limited company directors will find arranging a mortgage ‘no walk in the park’ as how (or if) you take your income out of the business, can affect which mortgage lenders will consider you.

Most mortgage lenders will consider PAYE income and Dividends from your business. However, if you retain profit within the business rather than pay higher rate tax, most lenders will not consider that as income for mortgage purposes.

We provide mortgage advice for self-employed applicants every day and understand how each lender calculates income for affordability. This means that our mortgage brokers are your best source for self-employed mortgage advice.

Bad Credit Mortgage Advisor

Where a client has a bad credit history, mainstream lenders will most likely turn their back on an application. However, if a bad credit application is handled correctly by a good mortgage advisor, there are subprime lending options out there for many circumstances.

Our financial mortgage advisors will fully assess your bad credit history and how it affects your mortgage application before running credit score with any lender. We will then talk to potential subprime lenders and establish that they are likely to accept your application before coming back to you with an overview of terms and requesting permission to credit score.

Best Mortgage Advisor for First Time Buyers

A first-time buyer is entering a world with which they are not familiar and will have many queries and concerns. They may also have additional factors complicating the case, including:

  • Help to Buy and other affordable lending schemes
  • Gifted deposits
  • Low deposits
  • Guarantors

Our mortgage advisors make it easy for first time buyers to understand their lending potential and their options.

Explaining each step of the process along the way, our experienced finanicla mortgage advisors make sure as much stress is eliminated from the process as possible for first time buyers.

Buy to Let Mortgage Advisor

The buy to let mortgage arena, as much as any in the mortgage market, is undergoing major change.

Recent pseudo-regulation via the mortgage credit directive has seen some buy to let mortgages being tagged as consumer buy to lets and becoming de facto regulated.

All of this makes the buy to let mortgage market more complex than ever for the investor to negotiate. Fortunately, as well as the availability of our experienced buy to let mortgage advisors, we have a number of tools to assist both the first time and the experienced buy to let investor.

Interest Only Mortgage Advisor

Interest only mortgages, although still common in the buy to let market, and much more difficult to arrange in the residential mortgage market.

Your mortgage advisor knows which lenders will consider interest only mortgage applications and on what terms. These terms may be 100% interest only, or a part and part arrangement with one element interest only and one element on a repayment basis.

Please note, that all interest only arrangements will be expected to be backed by a repayment strategy to clear the capital at the end of the mortgage term. Suitable interest only repayment vehicles include:

  • Sale of the property
  • Sale of another property
  • Endowments
  • ISAs
  • Pension plans

Second Home Mortgage Advice

Considering buying a second home or a property for a family to live in? Regulation has made the area of second mortgages particularly complex. We understand the lenders active in this market and how they will view your application.

Second Charge Mortgages

Do you already have a mortgage on your home or investment property? Perhaps you are considering home improvement? Or a second purchase? Do you need extra funding?

The standard answer may be to re-mortgage, but there are circumstances where this is not practical for the property owner.

  • Not meeting lender’s criteria
  • Current mortgage on an attractive rate
  • Reason for lending not acceptable to lender
  • Poor credit history

In these circumstances, our mortgage advisors can help you identify a ‘second charge’ lender that will offer you funds at competitive rates without disturbing your current lending.

A versatile and useful source of funding, second charge mortgages can be arranged in just two weeks.

Best Mortgage Advisor for Contractors

Changes in the workplace have meant more and more people are becoming self-employed, and a major growth area is individuals contracting their services to companies.

When seeking a mortgage, a Contractor who may be on a very sizeable day rate, can find it difficult to arrange the lending they require. This is particularly true where:

  • profit is left within a limited company
  • the trading history is short
  • spouse or family are listed as company directors

Fortunately, there are some lenders in the market that have specialist terms and mortgages for Contractors.

Although this was a market originally focused on IT Contractors, many occupations can now be considered in the same way.

As a financial mortgage advisor, we can assist you in finding the best contractor mortgage available for you.

Let to Buy Mortgage Advice

Many of our home moving professional clients wish to keep their current home as an investment property and let it out. In many cases, as part of the process, they also want to raise additional funds on the current home towards deposit on the new home. This is known as let to buy.

Let to buy is a complex and tricky area as mortgage lenders place a number of restrictions on these scenarios which may trip the unknowing borrower up – for example:

  • Some lenders will not lend where the current property is not already let
  • Lenders will limit loan to value if the current property is to be let
  • Some buy to let lenders will not offer re-mortgage options on the property to be let

For these, and other reasons, it is important that the householder who intends to let their current home, get suitable advice from one of our mortgage advisors. We deal with let to buy scenarios every day and understand how to put together lending to suit your needs.

Understanding loan to value

LTV, or loan to value, is a mathematical calculation used by mortgage lenders to establish which deals they may offer to an applicant. For example, a £75,000 mortgage on a £100,000 purchase calculates at 75% LTV

75,000/100,000 X 100