Precise Mortgages

Precise Mortgages have today announced that they will be hosting an exclusive event at the 2012 London Olympics and two lucky brokers will get the chance to attend the Men’s 200 metre final on 9th August with Precise Mortgages and special guests.

Every Short Term Lending or Bridging case that completes with Precise Mortgages between 13th February and 30th June will be automatically entered in to the prize draw. Two brokers will be randomly selected from the entries on the 1st July. The prize also includes dinner at a top London restaurant with overnight accommodation, plus the lucky winners will also get to see the Men’s 800 metre final, Men’s triple jump, Men’s decathlon – Javelin & 1500 metres, Women’s 800 metre semi-final, Women’s 4x 100 metre heats and the Women’s javelin final.

Alan Cleary at Precise Mortgages said; “We are really looking forward to hosting the event at the Olympics, it is a great opportunity to thank brokers for their business. I wish we had more tickets to give away, but as thousands of people will testify, tickets to the games have been difficult to source.”

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As long as there are lenders there will be someone trying to defraud them so it is important that we remain vigilant and aware of the risks. The risk to lenders is obvious but the risk to brokers and other professionals in the supply chain is not so obvious.

Here is a good reason why you should protect yourself. We deploy a significant amount of resource and money to fraud detection and there appears to be a move by fraudsters away from standard mortgages towards bridging.

In December we identified three attempts at fraud, all of which were bridging cases. In one of them a borrower wanted a loan of £345,000 on a property worth £799,000 to carry out refurbishment work.
When we entered the case into our system, the national fraud database we subscribe to flagged the case as suspicious. On investigation we found that the owner of the property in question had no knowledge of the application for a mortgage and that a previous tenant had gathered enough data to attempt identity fraud.
When we approached the broker he was horrified and concerned about the consequences of his authorisation. He had accepted a deal from an introducer he did not know and in this instance we did not believe he was complicit so took no action against him.

But there could have been serious repercussions for that broker which could have cost him his livelihood.

Precise Mortgages has joined Manor Mortgages’ lender panel and are working together to promote near prime and bridging loans to the intermediary market. Together they plan to provide more product choice for brokers and options for customers who may be struggling to obtain mortgages on the high street.
Roger Morris, Sales Director for Precise Mortgages says “I have known the team at Manor Mortgages for many years and they have remained at the forefront of product innovation and continue to be successful distributors within the market.”

Cameron Amaira of Manor Mortgages added “It is exciting for us to be working with a lender who embraces the value of packagers. Their Online mortgage system is very packager friendly & gives us accurate & instant decisions. 2012 looks to be a stable year for lending, and it is reassuring to know that Precise Mortgages are keen to increase lending in both Near Prime & Short Term Lending, this can only be positive news for the market.”

As is typical in the bridging market, Precise Mortgages offers a retained interest product to fund monthly payments. However, in a departure from market norm the lender does not charge interest on the entire retained portion from day one, instead it charges interest as the money is released to the borrower’s account.

A good case in point was where Precise Mortgages and another well known bridging lender were both quoting on a £1.9m deal over a term of 12 months. Both lenders were quoting a rate of 1.15% per month but even though the monthly rate looked the same the interest charged was £28,400 less with Precise Mortgages, or in other words a difference of 0.125% per month. This was as a direct result of only charging interest as and when the money has been released to the borrower’s account.

Alan Cleary, managing director of Precise Mortgages says “borrowers and indeed many brokers are probably not aware of the inconsistent nature of how interest is calculated by bridging lenders. If all bridging lenders applied the method we use it would save borrowers over £12 million per year in interest payments. We believe in being transparent and in treating customers fairly so that intermediaries can reliably advise their clients on the most appropriate course of action. I would recommend that all intermediaries carefully check the total amount repayable to ensure they are comparing like with like and ask the lender to confirm their interest charging policy if there is any doubt.”