Playbook, mortgage broker
Four separate bills, and a visitor trying to total them
Somebody working out whether they can afford to move is not asking for a rate. They are trying to assemble a figure out of costs charged by four different organisations, arriving at four different moments, described on four different documents. Most of that list is publishable and none of it goes stale. What cannot be produced is the one number they think they are asking for, which is what the mortgage itself will cost them each month.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for quotes and estimates holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The valuation is instructed by the lender and paid for by the applicant, and it is not a survey: it exists to satisfy the lender about its security, so a buyer who paid for it and expected a report on the roof has bought the wrong thing entirely.
- A lender's product fee can often be added to the loan rather than paid up front, which quietly changes the figure somebody is trying to add up, and nobody explains that choice until an illustration is in front of them.
- The firm's own fee is the only line on the list it controls, and whether it falls at application, at offer, or not at all is a fixed fact that should be settled before any of the others are discussed.
- Conveyancing sits inside the total in a buyer's head but is billed by a different firm doing different work, so a broker who answers with one round figure has quoted for something it does not do.
How it arrives
- what does it cost to arrange a mortgage
- is the valuation fee separate from your fee
- can the lender fee be added to the loan
- what is the lender valuation actually for
- do i pay for a survey on top of all this
- who charges what when you buy a house
What has to be indexed for this to work
| A cost list arranged by who sends the bill | One heading each for the firm, the lender, the valuer the lender instructs and the conveyancer, with what each charges for. The separation is the answer, because the confusion is about ownership rather than about amounts. |
|---|---|
| What a lender's valuation is, and what it is not | Who instructs it, who pays for it, what it looks at and what it does not. Written for somebody who believes they have already paid for a survey, since that misreading is the expensive one and it happens on most first purchases. |
| Which lender charges can be added to the loan | The product fee and anything else a lender lets an applicant roll up, described as a choice with a consequence rather than as a discount. Give the mechanism and leave every amount to the illustration. |
| The sentence you use for what you will not put a figure on | Monthly payments, rates and borrowing amounts, in your own wording, with the reason attached. Publishing the refusal means the assistant repeats yours rather than improvising one, and applicants take it better in the firm's voice. |
The reply
There are four separate bills on a purchase and only one of them is ours [1]. We charge our own fee, and I can tell you exactly when it falls due. The lender charges its own fees, some of which can usually be added to the loan rather than paid on the day. The valuation is instructed by the lender and paid by you, and it is not a survey of the condition of the property [2]. Conveyancing is billed by a separate firm. What I cannot do is tell you what the mortgage itself will cost each month or what you could borrow, because that needs a lender, a product and your full circumstances. Leave your name and an email and an adviser will go through the whole figure with you.
Splitting the list by who bills is what makes it usable, since the visitor is working out who to expect an invoice from as much as what it says. The valuation sentence sits high because that misunderstanding costs somebody a survey they needed. The refusal names the specific number being withheld rather than the topic, which stops it reading as evasion.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor supplies a purchase price, a deposit or an income and asks what the monthly payment would come to, or asks for one total figure that includes the mortgage.
I can list what gets charged and by whom, but I cannot work out a monthly payment or a borrowing figure, because that depends on a lender and a product rather than on anything published here. Leave your name and an email and an adviser will put the numbers together.
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 monthly payment, however roughly or however hedged, because it needs a product, a term and a lender decision that no indexed page can supply.
- Never describe the lender's valuation as a survey of the condition of the property, since somebody will rely on that and skip the inspection they actually needed.
- Never state a lender's product fee or valuation scale as a fixed amount, because those sit inside a product's own terms and leave with the product.
- Never total up costs the firm does not charge, since a conveyancer's bill is not the broker's to quote and the buyer will hold the firm to the number.
Questions
- Can it give an approximate monthly payment if we say approximate loudly enough?
- No, and the qualifier does not survive the conversation. A figure produced on a website is repeated to an estate agent as a fact within the hour, and the correction arrives after an offer has been made. The costs list is the part worth publishing.
- People keep paying for a valuation and thinking they have had a survey. Does this help?
- It is the single most useful thing on the page. Write it as what the valuation is for rather than as what it excludes, because a list of exclusions reads as small print and a sentence about protecting the lender's security is understood immediately.
- Should we publish the lender fees we see most often?
- Not as figures. They belong to products that get withdrawn, and a fee quoted against a product that no longer exists is the same failure as a stale rate. Describe the kinds of fee and where the applicant will see the real ones.
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 quotes and estimates in generalWhat has to be known before a number is possible, how the scoping step works, and how to answer without stonewalling or inventing a figure.
- 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.
- Three complaints arrive on one website and one of them is yoursA declined application, a low valuation and slow service are three complaints with three destinations, and only one of them is the firm's.
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.