Autumn Statement Mortgage Fees

Autumn Statement on Mortgage Fees Transparency Consultation.

Transcript:

Hey there.  So the Chancellor finished his speech about an hour ago and this is another one of my videos on the Chancellor's autumn speech, that’s the ‘mini budget’, pre-budget speech, December 2014.  Subject for this video is in the small print, where I've read the autumn statement, there is a little ‘three liner’ in there which talks about mortgage fees and mortgage fees transparency.

So the big issue at the moment is, with effect from April Fools' Day this year MMR started (the mortgage market review) and that's where mortgage brokers and mortgage advisers are all required to be a lot more transparent with you in terms of how we agree a fees, how we charge fees to you as a client for mortgage advice and also lenders having much greater responsibility placed on them in terms of ensuring that the mortgage is suitable and affordable for you as a borrower.  But then also looking at from a stress test perspective, making sure you can afford it if interest rates let's say rose by 3 or 4%.

So that's already in place and then in the small print was a ‘three liner’ which said the government are going to consult with the Council of mortgage lenders working alongside a leading consumer and campaigning group, I’m sure you can guess who that is?  Which? So working with Which? where they are going to look at the transparency of mortgage fees and looking at detailing exactly what you pay for.  What are you being charged for?

Because I think what we get is a myriad of mortgage charges: we get application fees and we get survey fees and we get discounts and we get this, that and the other. 

[And] it's very hard to try and compare two different mortgage deals when one has got an application fee but another one has got a higher survey fee but the other one pay’s a different interest rate and things like that.

So there is some move here, to benefit you as a mortgage borrower, where they're looking at exploring greater transparency from banks, building societies, mortgage lenders.  So that you can understand exactly what you're paying for and being able to compare on a fair and transparent basis because it's very difficult to do that unless you come and talk to somebody like me, a qualified mortgage broker, where I have my comparison tables and I can compare the real charges and the effect of those charges over the years which currently lenders don't necessarily have to do, or they certainly don’t have to do, to compare the way that we do.   So that a little bit of a ‘three liner’ mortgage fees transparency, mortgage transparency was in the pre-budget statement, the autumn statement. Expect more to follow over the coming year.

Thanks very much for watching.”