What Mortgage Can I Get?

This is the most common question and conversation starter we are presented with from clients. Along with “what mortgage can I afford?” and “what can I borrow?”. And this question doesn’t always come from emails or calls into the office. This is what we are asked at networking events, in the pub or even in a doctor’s surgery. People are always curious about what they can borrow and have usually digested a range of third hand stories from their friends and a snippet of online research which they are unsure about. But they still want to know what they can borrow, and they want to trust the information they receive. 

In order to provide the answer to these questions, we have to embark on a bit of a journey together. 

At Bell Financial Solutions, we have access to each and every lender* within the UK intermediary market. This includes your big Highstreet banks and also your smaller specialist building societies. Each lender has a different appetite for different clients, different properties and different circumstances across the board. For us to find your mortgage and tell you what you could potentially borrow, we have to find out what makes you different and pinpoint the exact lender that will provide you with the most suitable mortgage. 

If we look back at the mortgage market during and prior to the ‘credit crunch’ of 2008, it was probably much easier to tell you what mortgage you could get. At this time lenders used standard income multiples, accepted low or no deposit and they allowed clients to dictate the mortgage they felt they could afford (known as self-cert mortgages) – this sounds like a crazy prospect, but I was there to witness this mortgage madness.  It happened. This attitude towards lending came to a head when people suddenly could not afford their mortgages. The Government announced they were launching a comprehensive investigation into the mortgage market (known as the MMR – Mortgage Market Review) which overhauled many of the processes which were deemed unsuitable for fair and practical lending to clients. 

New guidelines were implemented and to put it simply, there is no set formula to tell you what mortgage you can have. If there was, our job would either be extremely easy, or it would be obsolete as nobody would need us. What a sad world that would be.

So how do we determine what mortgage you can actually get? What house prices should you be looking at? How are we able to send you to a high street of estate agents in a well-informed position of what mortgage you could be accepted for? Quite frankly, we get to know you. We get to know you very well indeed. 

“So tell me about yourself Jordan…”

“Well. I’m 22 years old and I have a new job with a recruitment company. I fancy buying an apartment in town but still want to have enough money to go out and enjoy myself at the weekend because I’m a season ticket holder for Tranmere Rovers. Steve is giving me a 10% deposit towards buying the flat”

And how do we as mortgage advisers interpret and follow on from this information?

“If this client relies heavily on commission we may need to wait until he has three or more payslips to evidence the commission”

“We need to check what the service charges and ground rent rates are as they will be treated as a credit commitment for affordability purposes because city centre apartments can be expensive” 

“For the love of god I hope he doesn’t phone in sick on Monday mornings when his football team lose spectacularly as his payslips are not going to read very well to a lender.”  

“Are you in your probation period?”

“Who is this generous Steve? Is he an immediate relative of yours?”

And the answers to these questions then allow us to start eliminating potential lenders from our extensive original line-up. Once we have established a client’s income, expenditure and gather a true profile of their circumstances and preferences we can then work through a shortlist of potential lenders until we can finally say “This is what you can afford to purchase. If we arranged this today, this is what it would cost each month. This lender is who I would apply to on this occasion”. 

This is accurate and well researched mortgage advice, and we provide this to clients each and every day. And it is almost certain that the mortgage we recommend to you will be different to the mortgage we recommend to your best friend because everybody’s situation is unique. That is why we only provide tailored illustrations to new, old and potential clients. So if you really want to know what mortgage you can get, you have to be prepared to talk. The old “you can borrow four and half times your income” statement is massively outdated. 

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YOUR HOME MAY BE REPOSSESSED IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP REPAYMENTS ON YOUR MORTGAGE.

There may be a fee for mortgage advice. We will not charge a fee for protection advice.