A 100% mortgage - good if you NEED it (Royal Bank of Scotland)

Member Name: kingkano

Product:	Royal Bank of Scotland
Date:	19/10/01 (1105 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 100% not too bad a rate, MIG (MAP) can be added to loan if your extra poor!, good customer service

Disadvantages: fees, valuation time was long, works out expensive

My partner and I are just taking our first step in the property game, purchasing a 2 bedroom flat in outer London. We decided to seek the assistance of an Independent Financial Advisor to help us organise our mortgage etc, as we had no idea ourselves what was involved.

This was a good choice, for more than just that reason. I have only been in England for 2 years, and though I have a good income and no debts or bad credit incidences, financial institutions are still woe to trust me. We also wanted a 100% mortgage, so we could use our saved money to purchase everything you need (god there is a lot!) and to pay the legal and other fees.

I will firstly say, don't get a 100% mortgage if you can avoid it!!! There is only 10 at the most of these type of loans available, which really really cuts down your options. Cashback is not much better really, so if you can try to save a deposit. Having said that, we weighed the options carefully and decided this was best for us (with some top advice aswell).

This is Royal Bank of Scotland WAS helpful. They offer 100% fixed rate or discounted rate mortgages, and consider quite adverse circumstances (higher multiples and slight adverse credit history). We ended up going for a 3-year fixed at 6.45, so that we can get a better rate at the end, and also we expect to move in say 5 years. There are no overhanging redemption charges, so you can settle or change mortgages any time after the 3 years expires.

If you get a mortgage over 90% most banks will charge you a fee – it can be called many different things, Mortgage Indemnity Guarantee (MIG) or MAP as they call it at Royal Bank of Scotland. This is quite a large fee (it was 3000 on our mortgage) and some people cannot pay this either. This is where Royal Bank’s unadvertised features come in, and where I am glad we went through an IFA. He told us we could add the MAP to the loan amount, thereby not having to fork out for it immedi
ately. We did this, as fees come to over 2000 and then there is a hell of a lot to buy as First Time Buyers hahaha

But now for my whinge about them. We made the offer on our flat the second weekend in June (9th to be exact). Our mortgage was approved in principle 1 week later – subject to survey. Now I get angry, because they have taken 3 weeks to conduct this simple valuation survey. I cannot believe this, and even then it was because we chased them, daily the third week, to do it. When we saw the valuation report (1 page with a few ticked boxes and a 25 word paragraph description of property) we could not believe it.

This little survey had taken 3 weeks??? And cost us £200???? That’s my whinge over, otherwise we have found them to be very good to deal with. A reasonable rate considering our circumstances, good information provided and good service. The application fee for this loan was 295, but they didn’t bill us until we went ahead after the agreement in principle. SO if they had turned us down on our credit score, we would not have had to pay this.

As an update, we have been in the flat for 3 months now and have had no problems at all from the bank. We asked them to change our payment date which they did with no quibbles, and they gave us more than a month grace before taking the first payment. Whole heartedly recommended!

Hope you enjoyed my rant. Cheers

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