House buying - its not worth the stress

An interesting cross section of views here. Whether you deal with a broker or direct with an institution is a matter of personal preference but ultimately you are dealing with a person, or a team of people, and it's the competence, skill and professionalism of those people which decides whether your experience is good or bad. From the 'other side of the fence' as a broker I would say that to make the process as pain free as possible the borrower and broker/lender need to be very clear about what each requires of the other and delivering these requirements as quickly as possible.

Sarah

www.rea.ie

so to close this off we went to our solicitor on friday and he told us that he was informed that they were taking it putting it back on the market so that they could get more for it, the whole "we were taking too long" was only an excuse, talked to an EA in the area and she knew about them and informed me that it wasnt the first time that they have done this to people so that made me feel a little better knowing that we arent the only ones.

As my boyfriend and I wanted a 100% mortgage - we initially queried through 2 brokers our options.

Note: Boyfriend, wasn't a first time buyer. I was.

Brokers advised that we wouldn't get one, from any bank. As both had to be FTB's.

Few weeks later, a Sunday paper, included a supplement on Mortgages, and outlined everything u'd need to know. 1 particular point that stood out, was PTSB would give 100% mortgages to borrowers, as long as one of the borrowers was a 1st time buyer.

On finding this out, I rang up PTSB, and low and behold told YES, you can get a mortgage!!

If you are purchasing by yourself I'd recommend a broker. Went to bank directly first and was practically laughed at. Broker was more positive and had approval within a week with documentation returned for best tracker rate available for LTV ratio.

I'm a little worried now, am currently waiting for broker to let me know about our mortgage off, we were supposed to know by tuesday, i know its only thursday but comments have made me slightly suspicious. Deposit is paid for house. not sure what to do at this stage. She has been very helpful and while people have said its just paperwork, I think the mistake was picking the house before the mortgage. not the broker!

deem said:

I think the mistake was picking the house before the mortgage. not the broker!

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Very Good Point, a lot of people (including me) don't seem to realize the time involved in moving house and what should be done before the sale agreed stage.

First, get all paperwork i.e. bank statements,3 years of tax returns/p60's, and any other relevant paperwork to hand. And get Mortgage approval.

If your need to sell your existing home, get it on the market ASAP, get a solicitor involved at this stage so that house deeds can be released from the bank.

By doing the above, it turns you into a FTB (assuming your house is sale agreed) and can make you more attractive prospect for the Seller IMO.

A fair percentage of brokers are reliable but I have seen a few mortgage/broker cases involving empty promises, unreturned phonecalls [something which really bugs me], mislaid documentation and an ability to bullsh*t coupled with an inability to deliver.

Do it yourself.

The other thing about using a brokerage is while it may save you work by not having to go to each lender, you should ask which lender they don't deal with so you can be sure to submit an application there....brokers will always boast as to how many lenders they deal with, but they are not so quick to tell you who they don't deal with.