Start with the basics

First, you want a whole-of-market broker, not one tied to a small number of lenders. There’s no advantage to you of using a broker who’s limited in what deals they can offer you.

Second, you want a broker who’s used to dealing with mortgages of your size. Brokers earn commission based on mortgage value, so one whose average mortgage is £400k will typically spend half the time per client as one whose average is £800k. They need the higher volume of mortgages to make the same income. Don’t assume that just because you’re getting a larger mortgage they’ll adjust their process to spend more time on your mortgage.

Third, and most importantly, you want a broker who’ll take time to understand what you’re looking for. If they're running a conveyor belt operation, working through a script to give you a standardised offering, you might as well use a comparison site.

Shortlisting mortgage brokers

A common mistake is only speaking with a single broker. If you have initial conversations with three or four, you'll quickly calibrate what good looks like, and spot the ones who aren't.

Personal recommendations from people in similar circumstances can be a good starting point, but remember the best broker for a friend might not be the best for you. They all have different strengths. A broker who’s great at handling mortgages for someone with credit issues will be very different from one who’s great with contractors using umbrella companies.

However avoid recommendations or in-house brokers from estate agents. Their interests are misaligned with yours - they may be getting kickbacks, and the agent might use information from your broker application against you when negotiating the purchase price. There are strict rules prohibiting agents from requiring you to use their brokers, but nonetheless some estate agents will aggressively push you to do so.

When searching online, check reviews and try to find brokers aligned to your specific needs. If you’ve got any kind of complexity with your income, for instance if you have significant commission or stock based compensation or you want to use income from investments or property, find brokers with experience with your income structure. Similarly if you’re buying a non-standard property (e.g. thatched roof or a listed building) you can similarly benefit from a broker with relevant experience.

One thing you don’t need is a local broker, unless you feel strongly about meeting in person (and have a fairly straight-forward situation). Finding someone who understands your needs should generally take priority. The only exception is if local conditions make mortgages harder to get (e.g. costal erosion, former mining areas, etc) in those cases a local broker who knows which lenders are actively lending in the area becomes genuinely valuable.

At this stage, stay open-minded about fee versus fee-free brokers. While it’s natural to prefer fee-free, a broker who charges but finds you a mortgage you wouldn’t have found otherwise can easily justify their cost. That said, there are plenty of mediocre fee-charging brokers too, so don’t assume they’ll automatically be better than fee-free brokers. Most won’t charge until the mortgage is secured, so there’s no commitment unless they deliver.

Assess the individual, not just the firm

With mortgage brokers, the individual you’re working with matters almost as much as the firm. Firms control processes and fees, but the expertise and diligence of the individual broker makes a significant difference to your experience.

You can contact a specific individual broker directly (common with recommendations) or contact a firm and let them assign someone. In the latter case, check the assigned broker’s biography or LinkedIn before your call. If you’ve got a complex situation, you don’t want someone inexperienced. A broker who’s been around longer will have seen more edge cases and know how to navigate them.

Once you’ve got a short-list of brokers, book initial calls and email a brief description of your needs ahead of time. This lets them get up to speed ahead of the call - and reveals whether they actually spend the time to read it.

How to evaluate a mortgage broker

Once you’re on the call, this is the time you can really figure out if they’re the right broker for you. Online reviews can give you a broad indication of how good the firm is, but the call if where you find out if the individual broker is a good fit for you.

Have they read your email? If not, it’s a sign they’re a high-volume operation that prioritises quantity over quality.

Do they pay attention to details? If you find yourself repeating things or correcting them, that’s a red flag. Mistakes now don’t bode well for your actual mortgage application.

Are they focused on understanding your needs? Or are they just working through a script or talking over you? Some standard questions are often required for compliance, but the majority of the call should be a genuine conversation about your situation.

Do they actually understand your circumstances? Have they arranged mortgages for people in similar situations before? If you want to use RSUs as part of your application and your broker needs you to explain what they are, they’re probably not the right fit.

Do they answer your questions clearly? Can they give you an initial sense of what your options might look like?

You’ll know the right broker when you find them. The good ones make it obvious.

A mediocre broker will get you a mortgage. A good one will get you the right mortgage. That difference compounds for decades.

The common misconception about mortgage brokers is that you should use one because they have access to mortgages and rates not available direct to retail customers. While there are some broker-exclusive deals, in practice they’re a tiny percentage of the market and broadly speaking don’t offer anything you couldn’t find elsewhere.

This gap between public and private lending criteria is the real reason to consider using a mortgage broker. Not because they have access to exclusive rates (they mostly don’t), but because they understand how different lenders actually assess complex applicants.

The real value: matching you to the right lender

If you’ve got a simple situation: A good credit record, a bog-standard fixed salary, decent LTV, then you can probably use an online comparison service to find who’ll give you the best rates.

But once you add any complexity at all - be it bonuses, commission, RSUs, maternity leave, self-employment, visa status, or wanting a lender to consider your investment portfolio, suddenly the landscape becomes far more complex to navigate especially if you have multiple factors that come into play.

Once you get beyond the basics, how lenders underwrite you varies massively. And crucially, much of that underwriting policy isn’t publicly available to retail customers. And this “secret” (or at least non-public) policy can make a huge difference to both the amount lenders are willing to lend and the rates you can get.

Historically almost all mortgages were provided by a handful of large banks with large networks of bank branches to sell them, the rise of mortgage brokers has broken this stronghold with a quarter of mortgages being offered by smaller lenders. The best lender for you might well be a regional bank you’ve never heard of.

A good broker’s primary value is understanding the complexities of underwriting policies and matching you with the right lender for your specific situation.

What else does a broker do?

They manage the paperwork. The biggest thing that slows mortgage applications down is back-and-forth over missing documents. A good broker will guide you upfront on exactly what you need and do a first pass to identify potential stumbling blocks before the lender even sees your application.

They have relationships at lenders. If something about your application isn’t obviously acceptable, brokers have contacts they can call to get the inside view. For larger mortgages (thresholds vary by lender, but often £500k or £1m), they may be able to speak with an underwriter directly. If you’ve got a complex situation where a conversation can help, this can be the difference between getting a mortgage and not.

Should I trust a mortgage broker?

Broadly speaking, whole-of-market mortgage brokers (the only kind worth considering) are aligned with your interests. They make money by securing you a mortgage, at which point they receive a commission from the lender (and depending on the broker, may also charge you a fee).

Because they’re compensated on completion, they’re genuinely motivated to get your mortgage across the line. Around 75% of broker applications complete, with most drop-outs being buyers who decide not to proceed with a house purchase rather than application failures. Brokers generally want to avoid submitting an application unless they’ve got good confidence it’ll be approved, otherwise they end up doing the work and not making any money from it.

That said, there are a few incentive misalignments worth being aware of:

Loan size. Broker commissions are typically a percentage (often around ~0.35%) of the loan amount, so there’s a structural incentive toward larger mortgages. Brokers won’t aggressively push you to borrow more, but they’re unlikely to nudge you toward borrowing less.

Fixed term length. Brokers get paid per mortgage, including remortgages. They’ll typically earn the same commission whether you take a two-year or five-year fix, but a two-year deal means potentially another remortgage (and another commission) in two years’ time. This doesn’t mean a two-year fix is wrong for you, but it’s worth knowing where the incentive sits.

Add-on products. Many brokers also sell life insurance and income protection. Some of these can be sensible, but make your own judgement rather than relying solely on your broker’s recommendation, this is where their incentives are least aligned with yours.

What’s the advantage of going direct?

Simplicity. Removing an intermediary may make things faster and reduce errors. A bad broker who slows down the process and makes mistakes is definitely worse than going direct.

But there’s a catch: the market is almost entirely shifting to being broker-led. This isn’t to say you should use a broker because everyone else does, but it has had a direct impact on banks’ ability to serve you well when you go direct.

There was a time when you could walk into a high-street bank and have a mortgage appointment with a manager who handled the mortgages for most people locally and had seen everything in their time. Nowadays you’re more likely to speak with someone with far more limited mortgage experience.

My own experience with the “high earner” team at a major high-street bank was dispiriting: staff made basic mistakes explaining their own bank’s lending policies, leaving me with little confidence in their ability. I ended up going elsewhere.

If you do go direct, you’re likely better off skipping the branch, self-educating and using the lender's online application instead. Most branch staff won’t have the expertise to advise on anything beyond the basics.

The bottom line

For most readers with complex situations or larger loans, a good broker will likely save you time and potentially money. The question isn’t whether to use one, but how to find the right one for you, and that’s what we’ll be covering in our next article.