Broker responsiveness less than ideal. Super busy?

Hi,

As background, I hunted around and found a small Broker who came HIGHLY recommended and was local. This was for my daughter and her partner as FHB’s. After discussions with another Broker about a year ago and another local one just recently they decided on this particular guy as they liked the way he understood their requirements, communicated their options and his overall manner.

Moving forward to today, after giving this Broker the go-ahead to move forward a week ago with a pre-approval for the lender which will be the best option for them (LMI consideration) we are still waiting for his “Admin” person to follow up with collection of their details to submit the pre-approval.

As it was, we attended another Open for Inspection this past Saturday for a property of definite interest only to find out that another party had made an acceptable offer on it that was unconditional in nature. We couldn’t even counter offer as we really had no idea where my daughter and her partner would be placed in regards to finance.

We obviously know who the recommended lender is and what the funding strategy was so what is preventing us from going on our own way seeing the Broker and his staff member seem to be “incommunicado” at this point? I appreciate that maybe they are snowed under but what is wrong with actually keeping us in the loop? Calls go unanswered and unreturned, emails are not responded to promptly! I also thought that having a Broker would help to streamline and expedite this loan process.

What do we do???

 

Skip the broker. Or perhaps send them a message saying if I don't hear from you by xxx I will not be using your services.

 

Just engage a different broker.... there are several good operators on here

Calls and emails going unanswered is an absolute no go ... I don't care how busy someone is. At the very least, the broker or one of their support staff should have the courtesy to email or text or call back with a message , acknowledging the contact and estimating when they think they will able to respond more fully. If it isnt within the timeframes you require - go elsewhere.

 

Pretty sad to hear that.

Plenty of Melb Brokers here you can use, im pretty sure most brokers here are pretty well oiled

 

Highly recommended by who?

 

Find a new broker.

 

There's plenty of good brokers here. Find a new one.

 

Strange communication. Reputable brokers like you mentioned dont become that way by this type of customer experience.

As context, reputable brokers are probably experiencing a 100%+ increase in activity inside a few months. Most decent brokerage sizes have noted that advice/application prep sla’s have blown out to a few days.

It’s very hard to scale up resourcing quickly enough to cope with this.

Nonetheless, no one should just ignore customers. If they don’t respond, best to find another solution.

Who is the lender? The pre-approval process itself is treated as very low priority by banks - some big banks that assess may take nearly a month to do it. I.e it is the bottom of queue. Others dont assess it at all and just auto-issue it based on credit checks (without verifying income/etc). I.e. the value and what the preapproval is itself should be weighed up in your offer making process.

 

They were highly recommended on a large local FB Group that I have been a member of for a number of years. I have always seen their name quoted as being great to deal with, for listening and providing great options, etc. Never had the need to use a Broker myself (went direct to Bank for an Investment Loan within the last two or so years as it was always going to be fully offset).

 

YES ... it seemed very surprising as my daughter and her partner’s contact with this Broker was very positive initially.

I have been particularly impressed with links that he has given them to view him talking through the options that he is recommending for them and the reasons why. My daughter shared these with me.

I can’t be certain BUT I think that he may be a “one man band” with some Admin support but I don’t know this for absolute certainty.

The lender is NAB I understand. They seem to be the best for my daughter’s situation (LMI one of the cheapest and reasonable interest rates - their decision was not to accept my offer of going guarantor. They had a deposit of 10% saved). My issue was NOT with NAB themselves (yet) but with the tardiness with which this Broker was getting around to accepting all their doco and submitting the pre-approval.