The Mortgage Store

Chris Sanders from The Mortgage Store in Warrington introduces the branch and talks us through the role of a mortgage broker.

There are many, many things that a mortgage broker does, but I’ll break it down. Fundamentally, when you’re making the biggest investment of your life – purchasing a house – you want to put your trust in a professional. That way, less will go wrong.

A professional knows the pitfalls and how to steer around them. We make sure that everything runs smoothly so you can go ahead and purchase the property.

More importantly, we are able to run a much wider mortgage search. If you went directly to a bank, they can only show their individual mortgages, but we can run a market-wide search. We make sure you get the cheapest product available to you, with exceptional speed of service. When you need a mortgage, you need to turn it around quickly.

We can book you in, get your documents and arrange everything. We will turn around an Agreement in Principle in minimal time so you don’t lose the house that you’re looking at. Plus, if you think rates are going to change soon, a mortgage broker is the quickest and easiest way to get things secured quickly.

And not just all of that, we’re here to protect you against any life challenges you might face, with things like life insurance, income protection and critical illness cover. That gives you a safeguard and peace of mind that you’re financially protected.

Absolutely. And while we’re touching on the remortgage side of things, people at the moment are worried about what’s happening in the market [podcast recorded in June 2023]. Interest rates are increasing, so I strongly recommend securing a mortgage rate six months early. You can secure a product now, rather than wait six months for your mortgage product to come to an end. The rates could look very different at that point.

Should rates go up between securing the product and the end of your deal, you’re protected because you secured the product at the lower rate. If rates come down, however, your broker can cancel that remortgage and secure you a deal at the new, lower rate. So, with a broker, it’s a win-win situation.

We can look at all the available mortgages out there, quite simply, to make sure that you’re getting the cheapest rate available to you. If there is a reason why we can’t recommend that rate, we can go into the different scenarios as to why.

Every client is different. It’s unusual to find a really straightforward First Time Buyer with a big deposit and a perfectly clean credit history. We have customers who are here in the UK on a tier 2 visa. They often think they can’t get a mortgage – but that’s not the case, they can. We work with people who are paid in a foreign currency. You can still buy a property in the UK in that situation.

Not all lenders will like people on Tier 2 visas, and not all of them like foreign currency… but going to a broker helps you identify which lenders can offer you a mortgage. Other cases I’ve dealt with we call ‘concessionary’ – where you buy a property from a family member and they give you a portion of their equity. Not all lenders will allow that – but we know the ones that will.

You may have adverse credit. You can still get a mortgage. You could have an unconventional build – and still get a mortgage. You just need to go to a broker.

We’re here to help you at every step. Even before the mortgage offer, it’s very handy for an estate agent or a solicitor to be able to pick up the phone and speak to us. Something could have changed – the property price might have shifted. The solicitor or estate agent can explain what’s happened and we can just get a new offer for you.

Again, working directly with a bank, that would mean another mortgage process – you would need to book an appointment…it’s all very long-winded. But with a mortgage broker it’s all personalised and much faster and smoother.

We also help with Buy to Let – it’s tricky out there at the moment with interest rates now so high, but a mortgage broker can search through all of the Buy to Let products to find one that suits your needs best.

An Agreement in Principle is essentially a document stating that based on the information provided to the lender, they are happy to lend you X amount of money. That gives confidence to the seller of the house you want to buy. They know that you can get a mortgage.

It also gives confidence to the estate agent that you’ve done your due diligence and you can borrow the money to purchase the property you want. For both First Time Buyers and home movers it’s the first step.

Preparation really is key. Previously I was a mortgage broker working in an estate agent. So often, a dream house would come along and the client wanted to put an offer on it, but they needed an Agreement in Principle first. It was then a mad rush to try and get it – and it’s not always possible to turn it around in time to get that property.

So having that Agreement in Principle ready before you even look at houses will put you at the front of the line to get your offer accepted. You’ll avoid that terrible disappointment of not getting the house you want.

It’s one thing to get your dream house. It’s a completely different thing to make sure you never lose that house, if something happens to your health. When you’re taking a 25 or 35 year mortgage, if something happens and you can’t work anymore, you need some form of backup.

Income protection is one of the greatest products out there to protect you and your family. Life insurance and critical illness cover are important too – and there are different ways to arrange that.

You might own a limited company, for example, so you could look at taking life insurance on a relevant life insurance basis. That way it comes out of your business account. Executive income protection could also be paid out of your business account, saving you money on tax.

The very first thing you should do, before you even open up Rightmove and start looking at the houses in your area, is understand how much you can borrow.

Speak to a mortgage broker from the outset. We start with an affordability check, where based on the information you give us, we confirm how much you could borrow.

If you’re happy with that and you’re ready to start looking for a house, I would invite you to a portal where you can upload three months’ bank statements and three months’ pay slips.
If you’re self-employed you’d need two years’ tax overviews and calculations. The portal asks you a lot of basic questions about your past address history and 12 months employment history, your national insurance etc. All that can be completed in your own time.

Once that’s all come back I like to have a quick Teams call to touch on mortgage protection. We’ll talk about the mortgages out there and how much your payments might be if you did borrow X amount of money.

If you’re comfortable with that, you can go ahead and put an offer on a property. Once you’ve found a home, we’ll be locking things down ready to put an application into the lender. I would look at the cheapest, suitable lender and present a key facts document.

I’ll run through the full mortgage document part by part and answer your questions. By the end of that call, you understand your mortgage, your protection and we will hit the apply button. I always keep my customers up to date on Whatsapp. Once the mortgage is offered it is sent to the solicitor who picks up the work from there. That’s the process.

The Mortgage Store itself has been running for many years – I think it’s coming up to 17 or 18 years now. The Mortgage Store branch in Warrington, which I’ve opened up, was founded just two weeks ago – it’s new.

I believe I’m the 15th or 16th branch opened up for The Mortgage Store and we get superb support from them.

In terms of my background, I started off at Countrywide. Funnily enough I was at an event recently and a lady there also came from Countrywide – she put it perfectly. She said that joining Countrywide or any of the big players in the UK is like joining the army. You have to put your time in so that you can move onto bigger adventures

They had an excellent training programme to learn the basics – but I always dreamt of setting something up for myself. I knew it would be difficult to do that directly from Countrywide as it had a relatively small panel of lenders.

I needed to know what other lenders did, not just that panel. I also wanted to learn all about protection, so I became self-employed under an umbrella. That’s where I really learned a lot – I managed those really complicated cases both for mortgages and the protection side.

People have all sorts of medical conditions and think they can’t get insurance. But I learned so much about how to help these clients.

Once I felt that I’d learned everything I possibly could, I looked at either opening up a Mortgage Store franchise or going completely 100% on my own. But the amazing support I was getting from the Mortgage Store made it much easier than doing things independently. I find it absolutely brilliant. So I opened up The Mortgage Store in Warrington and I don’t think I’ll ever look back.

Absolutely nothing. There’s no cost whatsoever. An initial consultation is to understand what you need – is it about getting a mortgage? Maybe it’s the protection side of things. Maybe it’s both. I will go through all of the details and it won’t cost you a penny.

Think carefully before securing other debts against your home.

You may have to pay an early repayment charge to your existing lender if you remortgage.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up with your mortgage repayments.

The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate most Buy to Let Mortgages.