What makes a good Mortgage Adviser?

In light of the spammy review I was left with on my Facebook Page – someone who was selling cheap loans, and I’m not sure which part of the world he or indeed hales from, I thought it timely to go over what you need to look for in a Mortgage Adviser (or Broker). There are the obvious things we all look for: the person that’s going to get me the best interest rate and the person who knows how to give great advice and service. We know it, you know it, this is at the very top of our list when we’re looking for a Mortgage Adviser.

This blog post is about those concrete, it’s-in-our-legislation items you need to look for in a Mortgage Adviser. Yes, I can hear your yawn of boredom from a good 20kms away! But it’s really important to understand the requirements and what to look for. The legislation we have at the present, came about as there was a need to protect the consumer from those doing dodgy dealings, not just post-Global Financial Crisis, but also of more recent history with the proliferation of loan sharks.

1. All Mortgage Advisers must be registered with the following:
2. A disputes resolution scheme,
3. A professional body such as the Professional Advisors Association,
4. Financial Services Register

Mortgage Advisers must have an Adviser Disclosure Statement (or document) that details what sort of Adviser they are (it tells you if they can give you mortgage advice or any other advice) it tells you their Financial Services Provider number (you can look it up on the governments register), and it also tells you what you can do should things go awry: what their complaints process is.

Disputes Resolution Scheme:

As most Mortgage Advisers are either employed by a small business or indeed are the owner of their own ‘brokerage’, it’s difficult for Mortgage Advisers to defer any complaints to their immediate manager, and so on and so forth, should the need arise. That’s where belonging to an external Disputes Resolution Scheme is invaluable for the sole-operator.

And that key saying “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is” applies here as well.

So let’s have a closer look at this spammer we’ve experienced on the Mortgage Link North Canterbury Facebook Page. You probably can’t see the post he made, as I’ve blocked him from the page. But this is what I’ve noticed about his profile:

1. It’s a new page – it’s not a business page, but a personal page. There are a lack of friends on the page at the time I noticed it. It had six friends in total, and those friends looked like fake pages too.
2. It’s a foreign name,
3. The spammy post appeared to be someone who doesn’t work in the New Zealand market.  ” Looking for 24 hours Cash Loan, Business Loan, Payday Loan, Small Business Loan, Personal Loan, Mortgage / Home Equity, Hard Money Loan and so on” It may be a small point of difference, but no one in New Zealand asks for a Hard Money loan. And it’s not a product in our market, at least not that I’m aware of.
4. And the most obvious question of all, if this was a legitimate business, with legitimate funds to lend, why do they not have their own facebook page? If cheap advertising is what they’re after, then there’s no need to spam on facebook. Or anywhere. For whatever reason they are spamming, it can’t be for a good reason.
5. The interest rate on offer (and the wording wasn’t clear at all 3% of what?) was not even close to the home lending market, much less the financial companies market. It didn’t add up.