Alexanderhall Reviews

I am a first time buyer and was not made aware by the advisers at the Holborn branch mortgages on properties above commercial premises are harder to secure and may be refused He then made my mortgage application to a lender which I was later told by his colleague is more likely to refuse a mortgage because of commercial premises The mortgage perhaps not surprisingly was refused and I lost the money I had already spent on the lawyer and lost another few thousands pounds because I couldn t move at the planned date I also only found out after I asked that cladding and the floor the property is on can influence a lender s decision to provide a mortgage or not Worst of all the adviser did not even understand why this is a problem and kept repeating that he found the most competitive rate Obviously the most competitive rate is not particularly useful if the lender is not prepared to lend on the property you want to buy I was also told the likeliness of a lender to provide a mortgage should not influence my decision whether to buy or not which is obviously complete nonsense Because if you have difficulty securing a mortgage a potential buyer if you wanted to sell may have difficulties as well which could influence your ability to sell the property further down the line Throughout the entire process I did not feel like I was given the right information for me to make a good decision but rather that information was kept from me and people kept trying to talk me into making a choice they thought I should make The advisers didn t take my concerns about privacy sharing bank statements seriously trying to fob me off with why would you make your life harder which I think is unprofessional and disrespectful I had to tell them repeatedly to provide me with information they are legally obliged to give to me I still don t have some of the information I have asked for

Processed a first home buyer mortgage through Alexander Hall The processed was rushed and it felt like the advisor wanted to maximise his commissions through selling different products like referring to a conveyancer life insurance etc In addition my help to buy application form was returned twice as from the HTB office as the form was handwritten and had a few spelling mistakes on it which delayed my approval by 3 weeks When asked for support they are very weak

As first time buyers and without any prior experience with the property purchase process we decided to follow our estate agent s referral and reach out to Alexander Hall The initial conversation was quite pleasant and the AH adviser with whom we spoke was helpful in answering our queries This is the only reason why I m giving the extra 2nd star in my review Given how well our initial experience with AH went we decided to pursue a mortgage with them once we had an offer accepted a few months later We reached out to the same agent who actually informed us that we were lucky as interest rates were even lower than the ones we discussed in the past Things went downhill from there as in his follow-up email the rates he quoted in the options he presented to us were very different higher than what he mentioned on the phone This prompted us to conduct an online search across many major lenders all searches were about the same type of product in terms of LTV fix-term period etc so rates can be compared directly and we were shocked to see that the available rates on the market were much lower When we questioned this discrepancy the response we received from the broker is that AH is a whole-of-market broker that no-one beats them on rates and that the options they presented to us were the best for our individual circumstances He also mentioned that if we tried to go directly to one of the major lenders we would be entangled in a nightmare of additional documentation requests delays and potentially rejection Interestingly we were also told that we would have to accept one of the options he proposed before we could be given a detailed explanation on why these were the best options for us In other words we were asked to be careful about all other alternatives and blindly trust them without being offered any data to explain their reasoning Fortunately we decided not to fall for it and we submitted an application directly with a lender instead The process was much smoother and quicker than what the AH advisor suggested it would be and we received our mortgage offer without any unexpected issues or delays Perhaps it might have been easier to let the broker communicate with the lender and manage the application on our behalf but the difference in the interest rate we managed to get plus not having to pay AH s fee was so significant that we certainly made the right choice Also lenders also have mortgage advisors that in our case were very helpful along the entire application process too All in all and based on our personal experience going to a broker is a big waste of unless there are special circumstances in your case and you need to find a niche mortgage product in which case a broker might be a better option In most cases though it s going to save you a good amount of money if you just do your research plenty of data easily available online and go directly to a lender of your choice