Best to Use a Remortgage Broker or to go Direct?

When it comes to remortgaging, finding the best deals available to you can be half the battle. There are many online tools available to assist you in this process, from comparison tools that give you an overview of the market to remortgage calculators that help to best estimate the actual financial implications of a remortgage.

Deals

While these tools are often extremely useful, there are deals that you simply won’t come across by browsing around in this way as a consumer.

There are lenders who offer specialist remortgages, for example for people who are self-employed, have varying unpredictable income or who have had debt problems in the past. Many of these lenders will not deal direct with consumers and will operate exclusively through mortgage and remortgage brokers.

It can therefore pay to go through a broker, particularly if your needs are not standard, as they will be able to provide you with access to a greater range of options.

Additionally, using the services of an independent remortgage adviser can also find you deals as well as give you advice about them.

The Market

The usefulness of using a remortgage broker largely depends on your own circumstances. If you’re requirements are standard, you can get a pretty good idea of what your available options will be online, and can carry out the whole process relatively quickly and easily in most cases.

Special Requirements

Using a remortgage broker is especially useful for people with special requirements.

Bad Credit

If you’ve had bad debts, CCJs or just generally not the best credit record, you may find that using a remortgage broker is actually the only way you’ll get access to deals that appeal to you. Many of the mainstream lenders will consider you an excessive risk if this is the case, and you will at best be offered less than preferable rates as a result. A remortgage broker is ideally placed to find the deals that are on offer from the lenders who specialise, for example in adverse credit remortgages, and you might end up with a better deal than you may have at first thought.

Income

If you’re self-employed or have income that varies, perhaps seasonally or perhaps due to having more than one job that is part-time or casual, you may also find the appealing deals thin on the ground. Again, a remortgage broker will be able to present you with remortgage offers that you won’t find yourself by browsing around the market.

More mainstream lenders are now offering self-certification remortgages to self-employed people, but you will likely find that a remortgage broker can access a much better range of offers than you might come across otherwise.