If you’re already signed up with a credit referencing agency like Experian or Equifax, you can simply download a full copy of your credit report from their home page. If you’re not, most agencies will offer a 30-day free trial so you can download a copy free of charge – just remember to cancel your subscription before the free trial expires! 

Alternatively, your mortgage adviser can email you a link to our preferred credit agency, Checkmyfile. Again, you can get the service for free for 30 days, after which it’ll cost £14.99 per month if you don’t cancel.

Your lender will want to know more about your financial history before agreeing to lend to you. They’ll do this by carrying out a search with a credit referencing agency to see whether you have any blots on your financial copybook, so to speak. This will tell them more about your current financial position, whether you have any debts, whether you’ve ever failed to make a payment, and anything else that may have had an adverse impact on your credit rating. 

A credit search helps lenders to understand your past history with money and ability to keep up your monthly mortgage repayments. Ideally, it will reassure your lender that you’re a safe pair of hands for the loan. To find out more about your credit rating, read on to the next question.

If you’re buying a freehold property, your lender will require you to take out buildings insurance before handing over the loan. This is because a mortgage is secured against the property you’re buying, so if your new home got trampled by Godzilla or hit by an asteroid (just a couple of highly realistic scenarios), your lender would lose a lot of money if you weren’t insured.  

There aren’t really any other protection policies that you’re required to take out, although life cover is generally recommended to pay off your mortgage if anything happened to you (which is always a possibility when Godzilla’s kicking around). 

In a word, yes. In a few more words, we can get you quotes from our panel of solicitors and help keep you up-to-date with the legal process the whole way through. We recommend that you use one of our solicitors rather than instructing your own, as we can make sure they’re on your lender’s panel. If you instruct a solicitor who isn’t authorised by your lender, then they won’t be able to assist with your purchase. Which, as we’re sure you’d agree, would be a bit of a bummer. 

That’s why our advisers will only get quotes from and instruct conveyancers who are on your lender’s panel. 

First thing’s first. We’ll never charge you for anything unless you feel confident that we’re a good fit and want to use our services. That’s why we offer a free initial chat to talk about your personal and financial circumstances and mortgage requirements. 

If you decide to go ahead, we’ll charge a commitment fee of £250 to £500 based on the complexity of your case. In certain instances, we may not charge a commitment fee. The amount will vary according to the type of mortgage application and individual circumstances.

You’ll need to pay this before we submit your mortgage application to the lender, in addition to a broker fee of between 0.5% to 1% of the mortgage loan amount or a flat rate fee payable upon receipt of your full mortgage offer. We’ll also need you to sign our client fee agreement and terms of business to confirm you’re happy with the fees. Well, as happy as anyone is to spend money on anything, but you know what we mean.

No worries. We have a number of lenders who will accept one years’ worth of accounts on a self-employed basis. As Bill Murray once said we’re simply awesome!

Pretty much all of them, to be fair. We’re a whole of market mortgage broker, meaning we can help with a long list of lending types. Like, the last time we saw a list this long was when we were off to do the Christmas food shop. 

We can help with:

• Mortgages for First-time buyers
• Homeowner purchases
• Residential remortgages
• Residential product transfers
• Shared ownership purchases
• Shared ownership remortgages
• Help to buy remortgages
• First Home mortgages
• First Home remortgages
• Let to buy remortgages
• Residential further advances
• Buy to let further advances
• Buy to let purchases
• Buy to let product transfers
• Buy to let remortgages
• Limited company buy to let purchases
• Limited company buy to let remortgages
• Portfolio landlord remortgages
• Commercial mortgages
• Bridging finance
• Second-charge mortgages

We weren’t kidding. Last time we had a list that long we were eating turkey sandwiches till halfway through January.

Unfortunately, we can’t – but not because we’re being ridiculously unhelpful. The Help to Buy equity loan and ISA have both closed to new applicants. The good news is that we can help you with new government schemes like First Home and existing ones like Shared Ownership and Right to Buy. 

If you want to remortgage your Help to Buy property though, our fully trained advisers are on it – just get in touch.

Most lenders will accept a minimum deposit of 10% of the property value. We get that this can still be a substantial amount of cash for some people, though, so we do have lenders who will accept a deposit of 5%.

First, you have a little victory dance. Has to happen. After that, your conveyancer will take over and complete all the legal work ahead of completion. Don’t worry though – we aren’t going anywhere just yet. We’ll keep you and your conveyancer updated throughout, and we’ll also help you out with any legal documentation or forms you need to fill in. 

Firstly, many congrats! Secondly, you’ll need to contact your mortgage adviser to tell them the good news. They’ll need a copy of your memorandum of sale (which should be provided by your estate agent) in order to submit the full mortgage application to your lender of choice. They’ll also do all the nitty gritty admin bits that go alongside and arrange your mortgage valuation ahead of a formal offer. 

It’s hard to give a concrete answer for that one, as it depends on a range of factors including your deposit, household income and credit profile, among others. Your mortgage adviser will be able to give you a ballpark figure, but your Decision in Principle will confirm the actual amount.

We’re not going to lie, it can feel like your mortgage adviser is asking for your full life history, plus the kitchen sink. It’s all going towards getting you that mortgage though, so all the paperwork is well worth it. To help the lender to assess your borrowing capacity and get your loan approved, you’ll need to provide: 

• Proof of ID
• Proof of address
• Latest three months’ payslips (if you’re employed)
• Latest two years’ SA302 or tax computation and tax year overviews (if you’re self-employed)
• Latest three months’ bank statements so that the lender can see your salary being paid in
• Latest three months’ bank statements to show you have enough deposit
• Copy of your latest credit report.

If you have any questions about the documentation you need, just get in touch with your adviser and they’ll be happy to help. 

Let’s be clear – we’re not trying to poke our nose in where we’re not wanted, but we might have to ask some questions that are a little on the personal side to get your mortgage application underway. So, your adviser might ask:

• What do you do for work and how much do you earn? We appreciate that if anyone else asked this, ‘None of your beeswax!’ would be an entirely appropriate response. However, understanding how much you earn is very important when calculating the maximum amount, you can borrow.
  

• Do you have any debts or adverse credit? We are not – repeat NOT – judging you here with this question. It’s just that it can make it a bit more difficult to borrow money on a mortgage if you have debt or adverse credit, because a lender might have doubts about your ability to pay it back. If you do have a poor credit history, it doesn’t necessarily mean the show’s over. As a whole of market mortgage broker, we work with a number of lenders who aren’t as bothered by adverse credit.
  

• How much do you spend in a month? Again, no judgement here. It just helps lenders get a picture of your spending patterns and understand what you’d have left over for your mortgage repayments. If you’ve only got a couple of quid in the bank account at the end of the month, you’re unlikely to be able to keep up payments over a long period of time. Don’t worry though – the occasional cheeky meal out isn’t going to get your application rejected!
  

• Where is your source deposit from? These days, a mortgage lender won’t offer you the whole value of the property you’re buying. They did that back in the day and let’s just say it didn’t work out too well. So, you’re now expected to have a deposit to put towards the cost of the property. We’ll need to know how you’ve built up the deposit – i.e., did you save it, or is it a gift from family members? The bigger your deposit, the better. A bigger deposit can help you secure a lower interest rate and will also show lenders that you’re financially responsible.
  

• Do you have any children or are you planning to in the future? If you have kids or anybody else who is financially dependent on you, a lender will probably want to know about it. They’ll want to assess your likelihood of being able to repay your mortgage even if you have extra mouths to feed.

A Decision in Principle is a document that confirms how much money a lender is willing to offer you. An estate agent will usually want one to make sure you’re a serious candidate for the property and that you’ve already taken the first steps towards getting a mortgage. That’s where we come in – again! Spotting the pattern yet?

One of our advisers will assess your personal and financial circumstances and submit an application for a Decision in Principle on your behalf. Basically, we do all the boring admin so you can have fun house-hunting! Seems fair to us.

Ideally, as soon as you decide you want to buy a house. To understand what kind of house you can buy, you’ll need to know how much you can borrow – and that’s where we come in! We can help you understand what you can afford and get you properly started on your house-hunting journey.

A mortgage offer is normally valid for six months. If things are dragging with your house purchase, have a chat with your mortgage adviser and they should be able to extend it. They’re good like that.

We’d answer, ‘How long is a piece of string?’ but that would be distinctly unhelpful, so we won’t. It’s true that there are quite a few factors that can significantly lengthen or shorten the approval process, but as a rule of thumb we’d say it usually takes two to six weeks to get a mortgage approved.