When I was younger I loved playing the board game Guess Who. In case you have never played it, it is the game where you ask questions and use the process of elimination in order to whittle down your options. I doubt you will have ever linked the two before, but this is very much like the role of a mortgage broker.
We have mortgage lenders on our board rather than Bernard, Maria, Max and the others. And we don’t ask the same questions in the game; like do they wear glasses? Do they have brown hair? Or do they have a moustache? We ask things like; can you accept 100% of overtime as income? Will you consider somebody who is not on the voters roll? Can you take into account an upcoming pay-rise? Each time one of the remaining lenders answers no, we mentally flip them down on the board.
It is this process which often leads people to seek help from a mortgage broker, because if you tried doing this yourself, then essentially you are playing Guess Who without being able to see any of the characters faces. You are asking no questions and jumping right in and guessing each time. This is a bad way to play the game, and if you have ever used this method when playing Guess Who, you will know it very rarely works out well.
Being a mortgage broker does have a little more to it than playing guess who however. We also make sure we find you the best deal, tailored to fit your circumstances, wishes and future goals. With access to information from most of the mortgage lenders we can easily compare the different interest rates and fees associated with each deal, in order to work out which one will be the most cost solution overall.
Jason Hinde FPFS, Cert SMP – Chartered Financial Planner
22nd May 2017