- Your income has to be set out so a lender can read it
- A payslip, company profit, retained earnings, contract work, rental income, a settlement payment. Whatever shape yours arrives in, the person assessing it has a policy manual and about forty minutes, and won’t go hunting for a number nobody made obvious. Setting it out properly first is most of the job.
- The cost of getting it wrong is the same whatever the file
- A declined application leaves a mark on your credit file that the next lender can see. The order you approach lenders in matters on a simple file as much as a complicated one, and going to the wrong one first can cost you the one that would have said yes.
- You’re not picking someone you like. You’re picking someone who won’t lose you the deal
- Which is a sensible way to choose. It’s why every page here tells you what I do, in what order, and what you get in writing, instead of telling you how much I care.
If yours is a straightforward one
A salaried buyer with a clean file and a standard deposit is a good file to work on, and I take plenty of them. You get exactly what everybody else gets: what you can actually borrow with the arithmetic written out, whose policy suits a file like yours and which one I’d take it to, and someone doing the paperwork and chasing the lender so you’re not fitting it around your job. On a residential file I’m paid a commission by the lender that funds the loan, and you’ll have that number before you commit to anything. The complicated files are my specialty. The simple ones get the same care.