The Coreco Couch

Welcome to the very first episode of The Coreco Couch! 🎉 Join our host, Andrew Montlake aka Monty, as he sits down with renowned mortgage broker, Stuart Featherfood, for an insightful discussion about the world of mortgages and first-time buyers.

In this premiere episode, Monty and Stuart dive deep into the world of first-time home buying, offering expert advice, valuable tips, and insider knowledge. Whether you're just starting to think about buying or are already in the midst of house hunting, this episode is packed with essential information you won't want to miss!

🔑 Topics Covered:

Understanding the mortgage process for first-time buyers
Key steps to take before applying for a mortgage
Common mistakes to avoid
Tips for improving your credit score
How to find the right mortgage product for you
The importance of having a good mortgage broker

💬 Guest Bio:

Stuart Featherfood is a highly experienced mortgage adviser known for his work with high-profile clients and celebrities. With years of industry experience, Stuart brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to help first-time buyers achieve their dream of home ownership.

To contact Coreco please call us on 020 7220 5110 or click here 

Creators & Guests

Host
Andrew Montlake
MD, Brand Evangelist, Spokesperson @Coreco Monty's Blog: Mortgages, PropertyAwards: Business Leader, Mortgage Personality, Spokesperson, Strategist, Marketeer
Editor
Savannah Dewhirst

What is The Coreco Couch?

Welcome to "The Coreco Couch," a brand-new series that will become your go-to vodcast for everything mortgage-related, hosted by Coreco MD Andrew Montlake, aka Monty.
In this series is to dive into the world of mortgages, property and everything related to it, with a twist of fun and a touch of down-to-earth insight.
Feel free to contact us with any questions at marketing@coreco.co.uk

Stuart Featherfood:

LTV is just a really weird mortgage way of saying deposit size. The headline rates are there to drive traffic to websites, not not to be on offer to clients. There's something called buyer's remorse, which when you move into your house, if you haven't deleted that account, suddenly you get something a suddenly you get something loads cheaper that's next door. There's quite a lot of emotion going on because when you're buying a house, it's not just you're not just buying an asset. You're buying a home, and you picture what it's gonna be like to live in.

Stuart Featherfood:

And you put shelves up, and you go to IKEA and work out color schemes on your Pinterest board. I sometimes describe my job as being, like, 50% financial adviser and 50% counselor because it's so emotive. Buying a house is such an emotional thing. I think a common misconception tips are check your credit file. If you don't have a credit card, take a credit card out, spend a little bit every month, set the direct debit, and clear it in full.

Stuart Featherfood:

Definitely speak to a mortgage broker. Understand the mortgage, understand what solicitors do, understand how estate agents work.

Andrew Montlake:

Hello, and welcome to The Coreco Couch. I'm delighted to welcome you here for the very first in our new season of episodes. Now I'm also delighted to be joined today by my special guest and broker to the stars, mister Stuart Featherford. Hello, Stuart.

Stuart Featherfood:

Hi, Monty. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Montlake:

It's great to have you here.

Andrew Montlake:

Are you nice and comfy on our I'm very comfy.

Stuart Featherfood:

Very comfy. Very excited. Love the set.

Andrew Montlake:

I dressed it myself, obviously.

Stuart Featherfood:

No, you didn't.

Andrew Montlake:

No, i didn't. So, not only is Stu one of our most senior advisors, he also runs our mortgage education service, a program that sees Coreco offering mortgage advice to employees and contractors of large and small companies in and around the UK. So, Stu, first of all, we are here to talk about first time buyers, but I do wanna talk about the mortgage education service first, if that's okay. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about it and why why was it important to you to to actually run this?

Stuart Featherfood:

So once upon a time, I was a very naughty little boy, and my mum was concerned that I would mismanage my money and their money if something was to happen to them. So from a very young age, I was taught about finance by my mom. Not a lot of people have access to things like that. Yeah. Financial education isn't part of the school curriculum.

Stuart Featherfood:

It's just something I've always been passionate about because I had that as a child. That then went on to develop. I became a mortgage broker, and quite quickly, we identified that, companies were being asked by their employees about mortgages, about financial education, and there was just a huge gap in the market. So what we do, what I do, what you do as well with me is we can go around and we work with many, many different companies from big multinationals all the way down to small companies, and we can go and then pretty much do what they want. Whether they want financial education, we can run first time bio seminars, a whole range of things.

Stuart Featherfood:

And it's really individual down to that particular company. But I feel like the way the world is moving on, part of the employee benefits offering needs to be something to do with finance. And being born in the UK, we are hardwired to want to buy a buy a home. Homeownership is is massive. I mean, you could look at all of the press.

Stuart Featherfood:

Homeownership's huge. The government, whichever government it is, is always trying to incentivize homeownership because it's so important in the the UK psyche.

Andrew Montlake:

No. It's really interesting. I think what I what I found doing it with you is is the the the knowledge gap that's clearly there. And I think when when we first went into it coming on to first time buyers, I think we assumed a level of knowledge, didn't we,

Stuart Featherfood:

Yeah. We did.

Andrew Montlake:

that actually isn't really there. So what so where do you start the presentations now? What would be what would be your starting point for anyone watching who actually wants to wants to to buy their own home?

Stuart Featherfood:

There is no starting point. You assume people know nothing. The mortgage journey, the homeownership is quite, appears quite complex from an outsider's point of view. So what we try and do is break it down to start. So saving for deposit, what actually is a mortgage?

Stuart Featherfood:

How do I go about doing it? How do I buy a house? What do the legal people do? We explain the whole thing. But with the cost of living crisis, the deposit is the first part that people want to learn about.

Stuart Featherfood:

Credit files. There's a whole there's a whole minefield, but you can demystify deposit, get my credit file sorted, how do I go about getting a mortgage? How do I go about buying a house, registering with a state agent? Which websites are good? So, you know, your property portals.

Andrew Montlake:

So let's break some of that down then

Stuart Featherfood:

Fabulous.

Andrew Montlake:

so let's start with the the what is a mortgage piece and, and and and start there, which is, I guess, the first slide that that you present on.

Stuart Featherfood:

Yeah. So, a mortgage is a loan. It's it's very, very simply a loan. It's a loan that is secured against a house. If you're buying a secondhand car, you might borrow £1,000, £2,000, £3,000.

Stuart Featherfood:

So you take that loan over a couple of years and you pay off every single month. And at the end of the 2, 3 years, you own your motorbike, you own your secondhand car, you don't owe any money to the bank. A mortgage is exactly the same, but it's a lot more money, so you tend to take it over a much, much longer term. In the olden days, and when I talk about olden days, this is probably parents' age, mortgages were taken over a 20 year lifetime. Now due to many, many different factors, the mortgages are taken over a much, much longer period of time, sometimes up to 40 years.

Stuart Featherfood:

So it's essentially a loan that is secured against your house that allows you to buy the home. The secured against your house bit is very, very important. And what that means is if, for whatever reason, you can't pay your mortgage every month, the bank does have a legal recourse to repossess that property. So that is what a secured loan is. Yeah.

Stuart Featherfood:

Secured against your house.

Andrew Montlake:

And you mentioned, around the the credit file bit. I guess that's that's the first thing that a mortgage lender will check, isn't it, your credit file? So are there any tips and tricks around what that is and how people can find it and what they can do to improve it?

Stuart Featherfood:

One one thing I get asked a lot is, should I have a credit card or shouldn't I have a credit card? Then I'll come on to that in a minute. But, essentially, we work in, a computerized age. So when you're looking to borrow tens, 100 of £1,000 of from a bank, one of the first things they're gonna do is check you are who you say you are, but also your your background, your financial history, and what a credit file is. It's just a document that has all of your financial relationships on it.

Stuart Featherfood:

So your banking relationships, your bills, your credit cards, loans, higher purchases, electricity, and it's all in one document. Then it gets a little bit tricky. Different banks use different credit reference agencies, but there's 3 main ones, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Some use 1, some use 2, some use 3. But out there, there is a whole platform of many, many different free credit credit files, and you can go on there and check them for free.

Stuart Featherfood:

So Credit Karma, I think, at the minute is free, but there are many, many others. Anyone who wants to buy a house should be checking their credit file, checking it periodically, set up alerts. Because, essentially, at some point, whether you're looking to buy in the next 6 months or 5 years, the first touch point that bank's gonna have with you is to check your credit file. So you need to check all your details on there. You need to check your name's correct, your address is correct, and it's got all of the financial relationships listed.

Stuart Featherfood:

Because they can be patchy, they sometimes can require a bit of work. So for you to be able to do all of that work at the start and get your credit file looking good, then when you come to actually apply for a mortgage, that's gonna make your life a lot easier.

Andrew Montlake:

So I've got my credit file looking good. It looks good. It's a 999. Yay.

Stuart Featherfood:

Yeah.

Andrew Montlake:

What's the next part? I think I'm gonna buy in the next maybe 6 months, maybe it's 18 months. How do you how do you what do you tell people around saving for a deposit?

Stuart Featherfood:

So saving for a deposit is pretty much the the hardest bit. For many, many first time buyers, we do look to Bank of Mum and Dad or perhaps a bit of inheritance from somewhere. But the first thing you need to do is look into saving for deposits, so tax free savings, ISAs, lighters, lifetime ISAs, and just set yourself a goal. So if you want to achieve, for example, a 5% deposit, you can say, right, in 2 or 3 years' time, I want to have saved up this much money. Then you look at your budget, and it's pretty old school, but all of the apps, all of the banking apps have now got budgeting.

Stuart Featherfood:

So you know what comes into your household every month, and you know what you're spending every month, whether that's on going out, lifestyle, food, debts, and you're left with a net amount. And out of that net amount, you want to be working out what you save every month so you can achieve your savings goal in 1, 2, 3 years.

Andrew Montlake:

And, a lot of people watching will will sometimes if they if they're looking online, they'll see those three letters LTV or loan to value. Can you explain what what that is and what how that relates to the deposit?

Stuart Featherfood:

Yeah. LTV is just a really weird mortgage way of saying deposit size. Like, rather than just say, what deposit have you got, we call it a loan to value. So, for example, a 95% loan to value equates to a 5% deposit. So instead of saying a 5% deposit mortgage, we say a 95% loan to value mortgage.

Stuart Featherfood:

So, basically, the crude math is the smaller your deposit, the higher risk you are to a bank, so, therefore, the higher interest you're going to pay. So the more expensive your mortgage is going to be. Every 5% additional you put down, you get access to slightly lower interest rates. So until a few months ago, the smallest deposit you needed to buy a property in the UK in a standard format was 5% and 90% loan to value mortgage. Brilliant.

Stuart Featherfood:

You can buy a house, but your interest rate is going to be a little bit high. With 10%, it gets a little bit cheaper, 15% cheaper, and over 25%, you're pretty much gonna get the cheapest mortgages in the market right now. So we've just seen our lovely friends over at Accord Building Society release a 99% mortgage. So you put a 1% deposit down or a minimum of £5,000, The bank will lend you the rest of the money, and you can buy your house.

Andrew Montlake:

So, basically, deposit of £5,000 is is now the minimum.

Stuart Featherfood:

Yeah. That's the minimum. The point The the point is there's lots of innovation happening because cost of living's been high. People are struggling probably a bit more than they were 18 months ago, 2 years ago to save for a deposit. Innovation's happening, so I would expect a lot more things like this to come out.

Andrew Montlake:

So if I've got my deposit together, my credit score is good.

Stuart Featherfood:

Yeah.

Andrew Montlake:

What's the next stage? Do I do you advise I go to an estate agent and see a property and put an offer in? Or or can you talk through that process? Or actually, in my view, and I'm sure it's your view, actually, the first stage is to talk to an adviser like yourself first.

Stuart Featherfood:

I wouldn't just talk to any adviser. I'd talk to an award winning adviser. Right. Yes. So the the first thing is you need to get your ducks in a row.

Stuart Featherfood:

Yeah. How much can I borrow? How much is it gonna cost? What are all the fees? Could I potentially get something called an agreement in principle?

Stuart Featherfood:

Without having that conversation with a broker first, you're shooting in the dark. You don't know how much you can borrow. You don't know how much it's gonna cost you every month. But a good broker will hold your hand through this whole process. They will teach you how to register with estate agents.

Stuart Featherfood:

They will let you know about all the different types of survey. Yeah. They will guide you through the offer process.

Andrew Montlake:

Yeah. So 2 questions from that, and one is the biggest question Mhmm. Which we all get, how much can I borrow, Steve? How much can I borrow,

Stuart Featherfood:

Steve? I've been doing this job, like, since the dawn of time slash about 14 years or or something, and it's literally the question I get asked most. Yeah. Because houses are really, really expensive, and, basically, people wanna know what's what's my uplift? How much can I borrow?

Stuart Featherfood:

Olden days, it was very simple. You came to me. You gave me your payslips. I'd go, ta da. Here's 5 times your income.

Stuart Featherfood:

That's that's old news. We don't do that anymore. We do something called an affordability model, and each bank will have a separate affordability model. So some banks are quite conservative with what they'll lend you, but they might have really cheap rates. Other banks are much more flexible on what they'll lend to you or or that you can borrow, but they might be a little bit more expensive.

Stuart Featherfood:

And that's why you speak to a broker because it's our job to interplay all of that and go, do you know what? This is the bank that's gonna give you what you want at this rate. So I well, I'm regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Every bit of advice I give you is regulated, so it is my job to get you the right mortgage and the cheapest mortgage. Sometimes the right mortgage isn't necessarily the cheapest.

Stuart Featherfood:

Sometimes the cheapest is right. But it's my job to guide you through all of that.

Andrew Montlake:

So it's all very well looking online and seeing, well, that's the cheapest rate, but it doesn't necessarily mean you'll be able to get

Stuart Featherfood:

that rate, does it? No. For sure. Like, online rates, the headline rates are there to drive traffic to websites, not not to be on offer to clients. And and

Andrew Montlake:

what the type of things that that mean you can borrow more or less?

Stuart Featherfood:

The gold standard of borrowing is somebody that's very easy to work out. So they're potentially employed. So we get payslips, which is a very easy metric for an underwriter to to look at. But for somebody that doesn't have a lot of loans, credit cards, high purchases, outgoings in the backgrounds, children are very expensive. I've got 2, and they're leading me down.

Stuart Featherfood:

I know. So

Andrew Montlake:

Wait till they get to teenagers.

Stuart Featherfood:

Mhmm. But yeah. So so, you know, like somebody that's not spending a lot of money on on other aspects of life. So an employed person that has very minimal outgoings will be able to borrow. That's kind of your gold standard of of borrowing capacity.

Andrew Montlake:

Yeah. So things like childcare, personal loans, credit cards. So we also talked about stamp duty. Yeah. What is it?

Stuart Featherfood:

Stamp Duty? It's a tax. It's a tax by the Government

Andrew Montlake:

Boo to taxes

Stuart Featherfood:

Okay. So Stamp Duty history lesson, guys. Yeah. Stamp Duty, was first well, they they have record of it from the 7th century in Spain. 17th Right.

Stuart Featherfood:

17th century in Spain. And, essentially, it's a tax that you pay when you buy a house. Not when you sell a house, when you buy a house. Stamp duty, it's a cost that you need to have money for upfront. You can't borrow it, so you can't go to the bank and go, please, can I have my mortgage?

Stuart Featherfood:

But also money for stamp duty. So when you're looking at saving for your deposit or your fees, that's a really big piece. Yeah. The important part about stamp duty is it changes. It changes a lot.

Stuart Featherfood:

The reason it changes a lot is because of governments. So, it's a very, very big vote winner. So you'll often find, governments with manifestos will come out, and they'll be reducing to stamp duty or they'll be charging more stamp duty for evil buy to let landlords. So it flexes a lot, but it is a cost that you need to understand.

Andrew Montlake:

So as it stands at the moment, depends when you're watching this. Yeah. Stamp Duty's first time buyers isn't payable up to 425,000. That's right, isn't it? Yeah.

Andrew Montlake:

But that is due to change soon. Whether it does or not, we'll we'll see.

Stuart Featherfood:

And that is just for first time buyers Yeah. Who don't own any property, not just in the UK, but internationally. So even if you own part of a farmhouse in somewhere else, you're you're not eligible for that stamp duty holiday.

Andrew Montlake:

Yeah. Talk me through the mortgage process then. I've I've spoken to you first of all. Yeah. I know how much I can borrow.

Andrew Montlake:

I've got my deposit. What's the process? What how does it work?

Stuart Featherfood:

So the process would be we've had our chat. I've told you what you can borrow. I've told you how much it's gonna cost. I've broken down all of those fees and that process, and you've gone, right. Okay.

Stuart Featherfood:

So I wanna start looking for a house. Happy days. So most cases, I will do something called apply for an agreement in principle for you. What that is, it's a soft credit check with a bank so that I've done a a soft credit check-in the background to check your credit file is looking okay. That agreement in principle, some people don't get them.

Stuart Featherfood:

I tend to like my first time buyers definitely to have them just because it makes me check if there's nothing dodgy in the background. Or if I need to do a fix on something, I can do it. Once I've got that, off you go. Register with estate agents. So you've got your online property portals, you've got your Zoopla on the market and Rightmove.

Stuart Featherfood:

Get those registered. I would always advise my clients to set up a bespoke email address when they're looking for a house. So it'd be stu@monte house atoutlook.com. The reason is you get a lot, lot, lot of notifications.

Andrew Montlake:

A really good idea.

Stuart Featherfood:

A lot of notifications, but, also, there's something called buyer's remorse, which when you move into your house, if you haven't deleted that account, suddenly you get something loads cheaper that's next door. So it gives you easy access to get all of the properties, but, also, you can just switch it off else. It becomes quite quite a lot. You go out. You do your viewings.

Stuart Featherfood:

I think there's validation in keeping it old school, going and seeing and sitting face to face with your local estate agents once you've identified where you wanna live, get to know them, stay in really good contact with them, and then you go do viewings. Viewings, the average number of viewings for somebody to buy a house is 7. Some people, it's 1. Some people, it's 50. But the average number is 7.

Stuart Featherfood:

Once you've done a viewing and you like the property, I would generally then ask you to give me a shout about it. We'll chat about it. What are the pros? What are the cons? Mhmm.

Stuart Featherfood:

I might have some questions that you need to ask an estate agent. You then put an offer in. That offer either gets rejected or accepted. Once it gets accepted, then you instruct your solicitors, and you apply for your mortgage. So mortgage application, let's go.

Andrew Montlake:

Go for it.

Stuart Featherfood:

So mortgage, mortgage application. So I sit down, I talk you through the mortgage that I'm recommending for you. I go through all of the terms and conditions. You understand it. You ask lots of questions.

Stuart Featherfood:

Once you're fully comfortable with it, we'll do the mortgage application. So at that point, I do, I it's called keying. Keying. So we key a mortgage application, which goes off to the lender. I supply documentation, which will be your ID, so we know who you are.

Stuart Featherfood:

Mhmm. Your income, so we can work out what you can borrow, but also your outgoings, which is normally 3 months bank statements. Some banks, it's 6. That all goes to somebody called an underwriter. An underwriter is a person that literally sits there and goes through your documents and either agrees to lend you the money or not.

Stuart Featherfood:

But, generally, I've done my homework, so hopefully then. At the same so once that's happened, you are called underwritten. So you're you have been agreed as a person to to to borrow the money, but you're buying a asset. You're buying a house in this case. So what also needs to happen is an independent valuer will will be instructed by the bank to go around to the property to check it's worth what you're what you're paying for it.

Andrew Montlake:

Yeah.

Stuart Featherfood:

Once that survey or valuation is back and you have been underwritten, your mortgage offer is produced, and that mortgage offer sits there in the background with your funds reserved, with your rate reserved for normally 6 months while all of your legal work is being done. Then you do something called exchange. So this is in England. Exchange is the first point that you can legally that you're legally bound to buy the house, and the seller is legally bound to sell the house. That normally takes 3 months, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less.

Stuart Featherfood:

But up until that point in England, anyone can pull out of the transaction. So Yeah. I personally would say, for my client base, it's probably about 3 in 10. Don't go from having an offer accepted to to completion. Right.

Stuart Featherfood:

That can be for several things. There's a problem with the mortgage, hopefully not. Legal reasons, there might be some something that your solicitor pulls up or, actually, decides you don't like the house, you don't wanna buy it, or the vendor decides they don't wanna sell it. So there there's there's quite a lot of emotion going on because when you're buying a house, it's not just you're not just buying an asset. You're buying a home, and you picture what it's gonna be like to live in.

Stuart Featherfood:

And you put shelves up, and you go to IKEA and work out color schemes on your Pinterest board and all of that fabulous stuff.

Andrew Montlake:

Do people still use Pinterest?

Stuart Featherfood:

Yeah. Maybe. I think so. I don't know. I'm, like, I'm the wrong generation of Pinterest.

Stuart Featherfood:

a bit too old, but, like, the and maybe TikTok. Snap. So exchange is basically the first time you legally have to buy the house, and the vendor has to sell you the property. And then normally a week later, you complete, which is when you actually have to start paying your mortgage and you get the keys to the property. Mhmm.

Stuart Featherfood:

So it's quite long, isn't it? Like, 3 plus months is quite a long process. Yeah. It is. Yeah.

Stuart Featherfood:

Why I'll I sometimes describe my job as being, like, 50% financial adviser and 50% counselor because it's so emotive. Buying a house is such an emotional thing, and it's long. And there's bumps in the road. Like, there's no such thing, sadly, as a smooth property transaction because lots of there's so many different moving parts from solicitors, from finance, to the actual bricks and mortar, to you as people and you as clients and your changes over the time. So it's you know, you need somebody on your team.

Andrew Montlake:

Yeah. So a lot of people ask me, actually, what does a broker do? And you said then very eloquently that, you know, you're part adviser, part counsellor.

Stuart Featherfood:

Yeah.

Andrew Montlake:

But why should I go to a broker?

Stuart Featherfood:

So most people go use a broker now. Bank branches are disappearing, sadly or not sadly, depending on what camp you're in. So it's so there there there used to be a a theory that you'd go to your bank and sit down with your mortgage adviser. Fab, if that's what you wanna do. But a mortgage broker myself, I have access to all of the different banks, all of the different building societies, specialist lenders, international banks, private banks, banks you've never heard of.

Stuart Featherfood:

And my job is to get you the right mortgage and the cheapest mortgage. So there are many, many different types of mortgage in this world, repayment, interest only, SVR, fixed. It's only once I've spent a really good amount of time with you, got got to know you, what you're like, your attitudes towards risk, your family setup, how long you wanna be in the house for, what's going on with your job. It's only then once I've got to know you, plus your asset, which is the house and what your goals for that are, that I can then go to all of those different banks who all offer many different types mortgage and recommend you that right mortgage, which is why you use a broker.

Andrew Montlake:

Okay. And so what I think we'll do, Stu, if you come back back onto the couch, we'll do it. We'll do a separate one just around exactly that. Those different types of mortgage, around fixed, track, a variable, all that. We'll try and deconstruct those.

Stuart Featherfood:

I'll check my diary.

Andrew Montlake:

Check your diary. I know you're very busy, but there are a couple of points I did want to just pick up on. We spoke about getting a credit score. We spoke about if you're employed, you have, payslips, etcetera. What about people who are watching this who might think, actually, I've checked my credit score and it's not as good as it as it should be?

Andrew Montlake:

Can can I still get a mortgage? And also what about self employed people or contractors who are watching this and go, well, actually, I don't have is it is it more difficult for me to get a mortgage?

Stuart Featherfood:

Credit score is generally a sales thing used by the credit reference agencies to get you paying for premium, to get you logging back in because your score will go up and down ever so microscopically. And look, oh, now I can get a mortgage because my score's gone up 5 points. Actually, what I'm really interested in is your credit file. I wanna have a look Yeah. What's going on.

Stuart Featherfood:

Have you got a couple of missed payments? Is it a big deal? Maybe not. Maybe so. But the whole reason about using many, many different banks is that everyone's got appetites for different things.

Stuart Featherfood:

So even if you've had some major blips, let's call them blips, in your credit file, there will be a bank that's right for you. There will be a bank that can lend to you. Very, very rarely do you see it where somebody's credit file is so irrepaired that you can't get lending. Yeah. It just might be a bit more expensive, but that's kind of my job.

Stuart Featherfood:

So worry less about your score and more about how your credit file's looking. Have you got a good is it all correct, and have you got a good chunk where you've been responsible with your repayments? Self employed, it used to be that everyone was employed, and the world hasn't changed.

Andrew Montlake:

Yeah.

Stuart Featherfood:

We've got direct contractors. We've got fixed term contracts. We've got, sole traders. We've got limited companies. We've got LLPs and everything else.

Stuart Featherfood:

Essentially, it's no more difficult for you to get a mortgage. What can be more tricky is working out your affordability because it's not as a simple metric as somebody employed. But even with 1 year's self employed employed accounts, I can get you a mortgage. There are lenders out there that will consider you. I think a common misconception is that you need 3 I think a common misconception is that you need 3 years' worth of of file of company accounts, and it's it's too old school.

Stuart Featherfood:

It doesn't work like that anymore. A lot of people, you find, might have suddenly got to their sort of, they they might have reached a certain level in their careers, and, actually, they wanna go freelance. They wanna go day rate contractors. They want that flexibility. As a day rate for day 1 day rate contract, we can now get you a mortgage.

Andrew Montlake:

No. It's good. And so as a self employed, it's the skill of you and as a broker to find out exactly will this lender lend on your net profits? Will they take retained profits into account, etcetera?

Stuart Featherfood:

Salary, dividends. Yeah. Someone look at your day rate contractor.

Andrew Montlake:

So

Stuart Featherfood:

There's many, many more metrics that banks can use.

Andrew Montlake:

Yeah. Okay. It's been very enlightening, Stu.

Stuart Featherfood:

I've really enjoyed myself. Thank you.

Andrew Montlake:

I'm glad. So let's finish off then. What are your sort of your your your best top tips for people who are just starting on the process who might be watching this?

Stuart Featherfood:

Top tips are check your credit file. If you don't have a credit card, take a credit card out, spend a little bit every month, set the direct debit, and clear it in full. Because, essentially, if you show your response with borrowing and paying back little bits of money the day you come to apply for a mortgage, you're gonna have had a track record. Definitely speak to a mortgage broker, Coreco. And just make sure you understand it.

Stuart Featherfood:

The first transaction you do, if you can get your head around it, have somebody that can teach you all about it, understand the mortgage, understand what solicitors do, understand how estate agents work, It sets you up because then you're so much more familiar with it, whether it's a remortgage or a house move. You know what you're doing.

Andrew Montlake:

Okay. Thank you very much.

Stuart Featherfood:

Thank you.

Andrew Montlake:

I've really enjoyed our time. Thank you. I hope you guys have enjoyed it too. Join me next time back on the Coreco couch.