Playbook, mortgage broker
How much can i borrow, and why it goes straight to a person
This is the most asked question on a broker's site and the assistant cannot answer any part of it. Affordability is calculated lender by lender across income type and structure, commitments, dependants, credit profile, term and stress rates, and two lenders can differ by a wide margin on identical facts. What makes this handover different from a safety refusal elsewhere is that it is also the firm's best conversion moment, so it should feel like the start of something rather than a door closing.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for asking for a person holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The number requested does not exist yet in any form, because it is the output of a calculation a lender performs, not a fact the broker is withholding.
- A figure produced here does not stay in the conversation, it gets repeated to an estate agent and turned into an offer, which is why the harm is external rather than internal.
- This handover is a sale rather than a safety valve, so the wording is warm and forward looking in a way the other handovers in this family deliberately are not.
- Capturing the shape of the income (employed, self employed, contractor, multiple sources) is what lets the adviser open the call with the right lender set, and it is safe to ask for because it is a category rather than a figure.
How it arrives
- how much can i borrow on my salary
- can i get a mortgage with bad credit
- do you deal with self employed applicants
- would a lender accept my bonus and commission
- how much deposit do i actually need
- can someone call me about how much we could get
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What affordability actually depends on | Income type and how it is evidenced, existing commitments, dependants, term, and the stress testing lenders apply. Explaining the levers is the useful half of this question and it is entirely publishable, unlike any figure. |
|---|---|
| Which applicant types you place | Self employed, contractors, adverse credit, later life, complex or multiple income, buy to let, portfolio landlords. Whether you can help a given profile is a fixed fact about your permissions and your panel, and it is the one confident thing the assistant can say. |
| What the adviser will need on the call | Rough income, deposit and its source, commitments, and whether they are buying or remortgaging. Handing this over in advance turns a first call into a productive one rather than a fact gathering exercise. |
| How quickly an adviser responds, and when | Your callback times and any evening availability. This handover only works if the promise it makes is one your team keeps, and applicants who are house hunting are comparing brokers on exactly this. |
The reply
I am not able to give you a borrowing figure, and honestly nobody could without knowing which lender, because two lenders can land a long way apart on the same income. What moves it is how your income is made up, the term, any existing commitments and the deposit. We do work with self employed applicants, so this is very much a conversation worth having. If you leave your name, your email and whether you are employed or self employed, an adviser can come back with what is realistically available.
It refuses with a fact about the market rather than about the widget, which is more persuasive and happens to be true. Confirming the applicant type is the one concrete reassurance available and it is the thing they were really testing. Asking only for the income category keeps a figure out of the transcript while giving the adviser the single most useful piece of routing information.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any request for a borrowing amount, or any description of income, deposit or credit history offered up so the assistant can produce one.
Affordability is worked out lender by lender, so a figure from me would be a guess and it is the kind of guess that ends up in an offer on a house. Leave your name, email and whether you are employed or self employed and an adviser will come back with what is realistic.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never give a borrowing figure, a multiple of income, or a range somebody could repeat.
- Never say a particular credit issue will or will not be accepted by a lender.
- Never say an applicant would probably be fine, or that their case sounds straightforward.
- Never suggest a decision in principle can be treated as a borrowing limit before an adviser has been involved.
Questions
- Is there really nothing it can say?
- It can do the useful half: explain that affordability is assessed lender by lender, describe what moves it, list the income evidence needed and confirm that you work with their profile. What it must not produce is a number, because the number is the thing that travels to a seller.
- Why ask for the income type in the handover?
- Because it is a category rather than a figure, it is safe to capture, and it decides which lenders the adviser opens with. A handover that arrives saying self employed saves the first ten minutes of the call.
- What about somebody who is house hunting this weekend?
- Make the response promise in the handover match your actual callback times, including evenings if you offer them. This audience compares brokers on responsiveness, and a handover that overpromises loses the case at the follow up rather than at the chat.
Keep reading
- Everything for a mortgage brokerProcess, documents and fees are safe to automate. Rates go stale fast and affordability cannot be answered generically.
- Handling asking for a person in generalThe design question at the centre of a support assistant. Offer early, offer once, collect what a reply needs, promise a time you can keep.
- Four separate bills, and a visitor trying to total themThe broker fee, the lender's product fee, the valuation fee and the conveyancing arrive from different places, and only one of them is ours.
- Two payments on one case, and only one arrives as a documentA fee falling due when the offer is issued, and a procuration fee the lender pays on completion which has to be disclosed but is never billed.
- A client wants to stop, and the offer is already on the tableAn offer carries an expiry date and a conveyancer is holding a completion date. Withdrawing touches three parties and reaches none of them from here.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.