What a broker is actually for

A retail lender has one guideline book. If your file fits it, that is a fine place to be, and you may well get a better price there than anywhere else. The trouble starts when your file does not fit, because the only answer that shop can give you is no.

A broker places, rather than lends

The work is matching a file to whichever wholesale lender writes guidelines that suit it. Two lenders will read the same deposits, the same ownership structure and the same property and reach different answers, and knowing which is which is most of the job.

Where that is worth real money

• Expense factors, which vary enormously and are rarely published.
• Asset depletion divisors, where one lender will divide a balance by sixty months and another by one hundred and twenty.
• Short-term rental income, which some lenders count and others will not look at.
• One-year self-employment histories, which a small number of programmes permit and most do not.

Where it is not

If you are a salaried buyer with a clean file and twenty percent down, you do not need a specialist and you should say so out loud when someone tells you that you do. Being honest about that is part of the job too.