"Buying a home is one of the biggest milestones in someone’s life and should be remembered with fondness, but for so many, it’s an ordeal they’d rather forget."
Close to one in ten (8%), or 27,000 homeowners admit they were reduced to tears while attempting to secure their first mortgage.
23% were forced to take time off work to make arrangements for their first mortgage. Applied to last year’s 338,000 first-time buyers, this equates to 77,740 people taking a day off in 2016.
The negative experience so often associated with securing a mortgage is also leading to inertia among current borrowers. One in ten (9%) respondents, the equivalent of a million people, say they’ve been discouraged from switching mortgage by their experience of being a first-time buyer, while for 13%, it’s actually discouraged them from moving home.
Trussle has calculated that the average UK borrower on an SVR pays £4,900 more in annual interest than they would on the lowest-rate deal on the market – equating to £9.8 billion in excessive interest being paid by inert mortgage borrowers on SVRs each year.
Ishaan Malhi, CEO and founder of Trussle, commented: “Buying a home is one of the biggest milestones in someone’s life and should be remembered with fondness, but for so many, it’s an ordeal they’d rather forget. A lot of it comes down to the stress and inconvenience of the mortgage application process. It’s therefore understandable that so many people are reluctant to think about their mortgage when the time comes to switch, but the sad result is that homeowners are collectively losing billions of pounds a year.
“The good news is that things are improving, if in pockets. We’re already seeing dramatic progress in the mortgage customer experience, with the use of technology speeding up and simplifying the whole process. This in turn should help to address some of the causes of the inertia costing homeowners so much money."
