We do not use Kensington Mortgages massively and as a Complex Case and Adverse Credit Mortgage Broker this may seem surprising.
Our experience with Kensington Mortgages is not great and it is hard to recommend them from the experience we have had. More so for purchases as their time frames to get an offer issued seemed to be slow, even for this part of the market.
As a consequence I found I had to pre-warn customers that they can be slow and ask a lot of questions, which is not a sign of a bad application but just a very thorough application process.
However, they do have some fantastic products and criteria which at times can make them the best or only option available for certain circumstances of the applicants seeking a mortgage. When writing example posts about bad credit lenders, I struggled with Kensington Mortgages due to how little we use them.
I have managed to find a case submitted to them this year however and it is actually a good example of where Kensington can come in to their own.
The customer was looking to remortgage a Buy to Let property she had in order to pull some money out of the property and lower the rate she was paying. The customer had a DMP in the background and to also complicate matters further, she was self employed in a newly formed limited company.
She had been self employed prior to this job but in a completely different industry.
We discussed the case with the underwriters upfront and they were happy to work off her income from her Self Assessment, despite this being earned whilst working a different occupation. I can not think of another lender who would have done all of this combined on one application.
The case was actually relatively quick to go to offer, in and around 3 weeks, which for an adverse lender and with this mix of quirks was actually quite impressive.
The deal itself was on a rate of around 2.6% with a free valuation, so the rate itself was competitive. The expensive part of this deal was the arrangement fee of ~£2000 which considering the type of case was still not bad.
Summary
Whilst you can probably tell from the opening of this post, whilst we are not as fond with Kensington Mortgages as we are with some other lenders, they do actually have a place in the market where they can come in to their own.
I am still reluctant to use them for Purchases based on past experiences, but this case certainly helped to maybe consider them a little more often than we would have previously for other remortgage cases.