When do you have to decide which lender to go with?

[Brendan Burgess]

With interest rates changing, it's very important to get loan offers from a few lenders.

For example, a few days ago, Finance Ireland had great rates. But if you don't get a formal offer before next Friday or draw down in time, you will be with one of the most expensive lenders.

1) You can get Approval in Principle fairly easily so get that from as many as possible.
2) When you identify the actual house, you should probably narrow it down a bit to the 2 or 3 most likely lenders to get a formal offer.

You might find brokers a bit reluctant to approach many lenders, so use the broker for Avant but apply to the others yourself.

At what stage does a solicitor get involved and start charging?

Brendan

 

[Paul F]

At what stage does a solicitor get involved and start charging?

There is probably no single answer to this – it's probably slightly different from one lender to another.

You can get Approval in Principle and probably complete a few further steps (with multiple lenders) before you have to involve a solicitor. But then you will have to pick one of the lenders and direct your solicitor to try to secure a full loan offer from that lender.

You could ask your solicitor if they are happy to try to get a full loan offer from multiple lenders at the same time, but the solicitor would probably want a higher fee for that.

(That approach sounds a bit like what happens in the "multiple switches in quick succession" scenario that some people here have done, but the plan is not to do multiple switches – it is just to get multiple loan offers and pick one of them.)

One other important point to check is whether the broker (if you use one) has the right to charge you a fee if you pull out of a mortgage application half way through.