You may have seen some wording at the bottom of our site, which looks like this:
There will be a fee for mortgage advice. The precise amount will depend upon your circumstances but we estimate that it will be £549. Please note our maximum fee is £1495.
The overall cost comparison is 4.54%. The actual rate available will depend upon your circumstances. Ask for a personalised illustration.
This post will explain what the numbers mean.
There will be a fee…
We are fee charging brokers. Our fee however is not a fixed price. We prefer to price based on the work we expect your situation to be.
Relatively straight forward case – we would charge £500. With this we would:
- discuss your circumstances,
- do the research,
- discuss the product with you,
- check your documents,
- submit your application,
- deal with the estate agents
- and be on hand to answer any questions you have along the way.
If your case is a little more complex or the mortgage is very small (this would mean less commission from the lender) then we would up our fee to £750.
If you have been discharged from bankruptcy 6 months ago, then our fee would be £1,495 which is the highest fee we charge. On the flip side, if you already have a mortgage and the deal is coming to an end and you want to switch products with the same lender, we would not charge a fee.
Our Estimated fee
Our estimated fee therefore is where we have added up all of the fees we have charged (or not charged) and averaged them out by the number of mortgages we have done. When we did the sums which I think was back in 2019, our average fee was £549.
FCA rules
Our governing body dictates that we have to tell you what our maximum fee will be. In our case that is currently £1,495. However I feel like that is unfair as it does not represent what the majority of our customers pay. By putting the £1,495 we have satisfied the regulatory requirements but we might have also put off some customers who think that is a typical fee.
We will of course always discuss your situation and advise of our fees upfront before we do any work or take any personal details. A breakdown of our fees is below (correct as of 31/07/2023).
| Mortgage Type | Customer Type | Broker fee |
| Residential | Standard | £500 |
| Standard (under £100k) | £750 | |
| Complex | £750 | |
| Adverse under 3 years old | £999 | |
| Adverse within the 3 years (under £100k) | £1,250 | |
| Adverse under 3 years with insolvency/DMP | £1,495 | |
| Adverse over 3 years old | £999 | |
| BTL | Standard | £599 |
| Complex (Ltd Co, holiday let, HMO) | £750 | |
| Adverse over 3 years old | £999 | |
| Adverse under 3 years old | £1,495 | |
| Remortgage or Product Transfer Residential & BTL | Remortgage existing customer (no adverse) | £299 |
| Product Transfer | £0 |
The overall cost comparison
This one is more complicated and I personally think a little misleading but we have to follow the rules.
Wherever we mention adverse or bad credit, we have to have that wording on the page. As we talk about bad credit a lot it makes sense to just put it on every page.
This is the interest rate of every adverse mortgage we have done over a given period averaged out. The issue here is that there is no way set way to work that out and also every customers adverse is different. We have done adverse mortgages at market leading rates through to 10%. It depends on the level of adverse and market conditions at the time.
The figure I think is aimed at helping customers choose a broker. But it is misleading as it will depend on what you class as adverse and when you did the figure. We did ours in 2018 I think when rates were lower than they are today. We did include the adverse lenders but we also included the applications which involved adverse but we managed to place on the high street.
Firstly, it looks better if we use those figures but more importantly it is also more accurate as not every person with bad credit ends up with an adverse lender. I think regardless of whether or not you choose to proceed with us this figure should be taken with a pinch of salt. It is far more important to find out what sort of rates the broker thinks they can help you obtain at the time.
Summary
I suppose the key thing to take from this is that the figures are averages based on our customers over a given period. It does not mean that is what you pay – it could be more, it could be less.
However, what we always do is to have a chat and get an idea of your circumstances. We will usually be able to tell you what our fee would be straight away. Rate wise we usually give an indication of best case and worst case scenario. Only once we get everything we need can we start to narrow down on the likely rates.
If you would like to get some tailored figures for your circumstances please get in touch.