Ian Crampton, sales director at Ferndown Ltd, said his client’s fixed rate BTL mortgage was coming to an end so he began to look at alternative deals. He explained: “Due to my clients commuting to Devon from Birmingham, recently they have been living in their BTL property since the previous tenant left. As this is now their secondary residence, I contacted BM to ask if I could transfer their deal onto one of its residential products as their income would comfortably support both mortgages.”
However, he was told that as a broker, he could not facilitate the transfer and was instructed to tell his client to call BM directly. He was also informed that the only time a broker could get involved in a transfer was if a client was being moved from one BTL product to another BTL product or between residential deals.
Crampton continued: “The only explanation I got was that this sort of transaction involves a whole new underwriting process where income would have to be assessed and a credit score would have to be undertaken. Why should that stop me getting involved? The bottom line is that BM will not look at paying a proc fee in all cases to brokers who are trying to advise clients correctly.”
Responding, Clare Mortimor, senior press officer at BM Solutions, said: “This case is a massive exception to the rule. We deal with this kind of case once in every 30,000 applications or so. There are issues, such as responsible lending and fraud that mean transferring from a BTL to a residential case isn’t as straightforward as a standard transfer. 99.9 per cent of transfers are completed in days and brokers get a full fee.”
