Client Stories

Two banks turned us down because my wife had been contracting for eighteen months. Nobody had explained that the way her invoices were dated mattered. Six weeks later we had an offer from a lender we had never heard of, at a better rate than either of the banks quoted.

I called about a refinance and was told, quite plainly, that with two years left on my fixed period the exit cost would swallow the saving. That is the opposite of what I expected to hear from someone who gets paid on completion. We waited, and they called me back when it made sense.

Third rental, and the first time the coverage test did not turn into a three-week argument. They had already flagged which lender would count the short-let income and which one would not, before we made the offer on the property.

My accounts are not complicated, they are just not a payslip. Every high street lender treated that as a problem to be solved by asking for the same three documents again. This was the first time anyone sat down with my accountant and simply presented the numbers properly.

We were above the conforming limit and the quotes we had gathered ourselves varied by nearly a point. Having someone who knew which desks actually want this size of loan, rather than merely accept it, was worth the fee several times over.

The assistance scheme we used added about two weeks and a lot of forms. What mattered was that we knew that on day one instead of finding out on week five. Every status note arrived on a Friday whether or not anything had moved.