Podcast - The One About...How to look for the right mortgage

Tamsin Caine talks to mortgage consultant Daniel Bell about where to go, what to look for and why your bank or existing lender may not be the best place to start when you're looking for a mortgage.

You can contact Tamsin at tamsin@smartdivorce.co.uk or arrange a free initial chat at https://calendly.com/tamsin-caine/15min.

You can contact Daniel at daniel@bellfinancialsolutions.co.uk or on 07539 474937.

Transcript

(The transcript has been created by an AI, apologies for any mistakes)

Tamsin Caine 0:06
hello and welcome to the Smart Divorce podcast i'm Tamsin Caine and i will be your host in series three we will be speaking to a number of experts and professionals in the divorce arena and answering the questions that we get asked most often if you've got a question and you don't think we've answered it yet please do get in touch you can email me at Tamsin at smartdivorce.co.uk now over to our guests hello and today i'm delighted to be joined by Daniel Bell hi Daniel how are you doing?

Daniel Bell 0:46
hi Tamsin, very well, yourself?

Tamsin Caine 0:47
roughly wave on very good thank you yeah not too bad at all and so Daniel is a mortgage consultant who owns the business bell financial solutions, i've got that right haven't I?

Daniel Bell 0:59
you do yes

Tamsin Caine 1:01
excellent and so today we're going to talk mortgages and when you are getting divorced and quite often you will need a new mortgage either to buy out your ex spouse or to move on to a new property so we thought we'd have a chat about how you might go about looking for a mortgage in the first place so do you want to start off and with some thoughts on that

Daniel Bell 1:31
so ordinarily your first port of call a lot of people would go to their existing lender and who they might have a mortgage with and of course i'm you've got a mortgage with them so generally you'd think you'd be able to get a mortgage with them going forward and they've got a track history and the fact that they know that you can afford a mortgage but that's obviously based on the fact that there's usually two of you and that's not going to be the case going forward. It's advisable therefore that you look at all your options your existing lender isn't necessarily going to take into account your your circumstances going forward in the sense of you as a sole borrower there's there's obviously going to be quite a significant change to your circumstances to what there was when you had that mortgage and it's definitely advisable to get advice on that in terms of what you should be looking at going forward in terms of a new mortgage because it's not going to be the same as what you've existing mortgages you might want to look at a different term a different type of mortgage and it's probably going to be new to you and you might never have looked at your current mortgage it might have been dealt with by a spouse and that's where someone like me as a mortgage consultant comes into play and you might think go into your bank is the best option and your bank know a lot about you they obviously see your salary going in but again your bank your bank only has the options of the bank your bank might not take into account everything going forward in terms of maintenance or child benefit tax credits they might take into account things that you don't want them to take into account so the fact that you will be paying maintenance or that you you aren't going to be on the same salary that you were going on to your bank is restricted to your bank criteria and your bank only and again your bank can only offer one type of type of product and that's the bank themselves and there's lots of banks out there there's lots of building societies out there and there's lots of different lenders out there and the only way that you're going to find out what's on offer is by going to see someone like me which is a mortgage consultant we're not just there to obviously get you the best interest rate and of course that's what we'd love to do but we're there to obviously make sure that you get the right type of mortgage and to help you along that whole process and guide you along the way and you might have lots of questions you might not have any but i'm there to obviously prompt those questions should you need to make sure that you are going for the right type of product you're going for the right type of mortgage and and to make sure that we do get you the right type of interest rate as well and different lenders take into account different things different lenders look at different types of income different types of expenditure and again that's where my knowledge and expertise comes into play obviously divorce is a very emotional time and then dealing with finances again is a very emotional time if you go to your bank or your existing lender and they say no computer says no it can be absolutely heartbreaking but that is not the case of every other lender or mortgage advisor mortgage lender sorry if one says no does it mean anyone everyone else is gonna say no and that's obviously where i come into play to obviously look at

Tamsin Caine 5:07
okay so it might be the case that if i let's say i want to stay in the town that i live in at the moment but i've contacted my bank and they say absolutely no chance you can't borrow anything like what you need to in order to stay in your town it it's definitely worth looking and worth talking to you because the might be things that you can do to increase the borrowing amount such as your like you said your lender might not take certain incomes into consideration where you might be able to use a longer term for example is that right

Daniel Bell 5:47
absolutely i mean different lenders look at different things different lenders assess affordability in different ways and that aside there's i could look at your circumstances and and look at it in a different way and go right well yes if we if you were looking to do it that way then you aren't going to restricted because of a b and c but actually have you thought about looking at doing it this way and actually this is a way that we could make what you want to do achievable if you want to get that house in that town this is a way we could do it and this is a way that you might not have thought about doing it and again that's you're only going to get that by talking to someone like myself and again that's why we're here and that's why we've got you know the knowledge the qualifications the experience to be able to do that and offer it here

Tamsin Caine 6:41
yeah absolutely do you think there's a tendency to think well everybody offers the same sort of mortgages and everybody can lend the same sort of amounts and so on and that's not not necessarily true and the other thing is that it's not necessarily going to cost you more money on a monthly basis because it might be possible to take the mortgage over a longer term now yes that will cost you more in the long run but it might enable you to do what you want to be able to do is that right

Daniel Bell 7:14
yeah absolutely and you know it's not necessarily always about me initial monthly cost and we look at the broader picture and i you know i'd always go through that with with clients and it is you know looking at everything and taking everything into account and sometimes it might be well if we need to do x y and zed to achieve getting into that property initially then that's what we'll do but it means that say in two years or five years we can then change it and do this well then that's that might be a way to do it and again it's it's sitting down getting to know what the situation is what the circumstances are now but actually knowing that we're going to do that in x amount of years or we're going to get to this point and it's looking at the overall picture in the in the longer term plan as well which you're not going to get just walk into your bank and you know just getting that cheapest rate or going online to moneysupermarket.com and just getting the highest interest rate computer says no or you know that's the limit you get there's a there's a bigger picture when it comes to mortgages and that's why you know we've got the jobs that we have otherwise we wouldn't be sat here you know it's not as simple as that the interest rate you can borrow four times your salary it just doesn't work like that it can work like that but there's there's a lot more to it and that's why we're here to help

Tamsin Caine 8:41
yeah there's a lot of other options out there so somebody's wanting to talk to you about mortgages what information did they need to gather together before they give you a call

Daniel Bell 8:53
so i'm an idea of income coming in so income about what they're earning if they're earning additional income so any benefits or any maintenance any investment income anything for any resources the details of their income and then details of their outgoings of commitments so again if they're paying out for maintenance or loans credit cards childcare and anything that sort of going out that's a major commitment and details of any past credit history credit issues and just themselves you know it's it's getting to know the client customer i'm seeing where they are now where they want to get to what they want to achieve and we build it from their home if there's anything else that we need further then obviously we explore that but initially what's coming in what's going out we can build it from that

Tamsin Caine 9:57
that was fantastic So you were saying about credit history, and people should let you know if they have had any problems in the past? It's really important, isn't it that people are honest with you? Because if it gets found out about later, it's going to cause more problems, I would say, is that right?

Daniel Bell 10:19
Yeah, absolutely. Honest, upfront, there's no, there's no embarrassment or shame. I'm, you know, I'm here to help. And, you know, it's not a judgement and, you know, getting through everything upfront, you know, I ask for quite a lot of information upfront shoe size, blood type, the lot. But once I know upfront that I know where best to go, you know, I know what lenders ask what and what lenders don't need to know that because that's their risk appetite. And if I've got it all up front, then I know what I'm doing with it. And I'll know, right? That lender doesn't like that type of bad credit, or that lender will, but it means that we get it we get it agreed straightaway, instead of, you know, three, four weeks down the line and not getting it agree then, you know, like I say it's all about honesty and respect. And it's no judgments or anything like that what what's happening is happening. We can't change the past, we can deal with the future. So as long as we know, what's happened in the past, then yeah, we can sort it. Absolutely. It's all about being honest. And, you know, I generally find that clients are because, you know, it's, it's honest, for me as well. So it kind of reciprocates No,

Tamsin Caine 11:28
I think that's absolutely right. And one last question. And you were talking about maintenance payments, either either coming into you or being paid out by you, if that's not been fully formalised yet, and book clients want to have an idea about what they might be able to buy, if they're starting to look at property, you can use an idea of of what the maintenance is likely to be to give them an indication as to the sort of mortgage they might be able to achieve that right.

Daniel Bell 12:03
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we can work on provisional figures given idea. And knowing that right, that's going to be in place, whether that's then going to be in place in formally or wherever, it's then going to be in place on an informal arrangement. And I can, you know, again, work that out accordingly, because there are lenders that will take and take formal arrangements saved from the very beginning, there are lenders that will still take informal arrangements, but may want it to be in place for a period of time. But yes, no, it doesn't have to be up and running for me to then go, right. This is how much you can borrow. If I know what it is, or we know roughly what it's going to be, again, with tax credits as well. You know, that can be one that you don't necessarily know what it is. Exactly, but we have a rough guide there. You know, we can play and go right, this is what it could look like. And, you know, work on provisional figures that way.

Tamsin Caine 13:00
That's brilliant. Thank you for joining me, cheers Daniel!

Daniel Bell 13:03
Thank you for having me.

Tamsin Caine 13:08
I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you did, please do think about writing us a review or giving us a lovely five star rating on iTunes, if that's where you're listening. hope you'll join us again next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai