Taking on both a new home and a growing family in the same year is a big challenge, but for Erin and Craig, the support from Gail Reid Mortgage Services made the mortgage process a breeze.
Not having a clue where to start with sourcing their mortgage, the couple were quite literally starting from ground zero. But now settled into their home in Alford and baby Ewan now six months old, Erin reflects on her experience…
Can you get us up to speed with what life looked before you decided to buy your first home?
“Me and my partner Craig had been together for two years and we’d talked about buying a home together but nothing was ever set in stone and it was very much a few years down the line sort of plan.
“We were living separately at our parents’ houses and Craig’s work as a long haul lorry driver sees him away Monday to Friday, meaning we would only see each other at the weekend. For all the time that we’d actually be in the house together, we didn’t really see the urgency to buy a home. But then I fell pregnant and that definitely sped things up!
“Luckily, we’d talked about living together and knew that was something we wanted to do, so the pressure was on to find a home before I gave birth.”
What stage were you at in the process when you decided to get in touch with Gail Reid Mortgage Services?
“When it came to mortgages and buying a house, we were clueless as to how it all worked. All we knew was that we needed a deposit – and a lot of guidance!
“It was my sister who first recommended that I get in touch with Gail Reid Mortgage Services and then one of Craig’s work colleagues suggested Gail Reid too, so we took that as a sign. We submitted an enquiry and before we knew it, we had a weekend call lined up with Danielle.
“The opportunity to have a weekend appointment over the phone was perfect for us and made the start of the process hassle-free.”
How did the overall process look like for you?
“Since we didn’t have much awareness of what the home buying process looked like, we were quite daunted by it all to begin with, but if I were to summarise the process I’d say it was completely painless.
“The first step was a call with Danielle who took note of our financial details and found out how things were looking for us. We’d already seen a home we liked so we based our affordability conversations around whether we could afford that home and to our delight, we could.
“Danielle mapped out our household income and potential outgoings to give us a full look at what the future would look like with our new mortgage. It really helped us see where our money was going and how much we could still realistically save after all our outgoings.
“We ended up not going ahead with the home that we initially saw, but we had our ballpark figure of the property price we could afford which helped us with house hunting going forward and we soon found our dream home in Alford.”
What were your key takeaways from your experience with Gail Reid Mortgage Services?
“Looking back, everything was just so easy!
“With Craig being away the majority of the week, I had to do a lot of the work in terms of pulling together all the information and paperwork that Danielle needed from us. There was a lot to collate but Danielle made the process a breeze by laying out exactly what she needed from us and completely took the weight off my shoulders. She always explained things to us and kept us in the loop with what was happening – she gave us confidence that we were in the best hands.
“Another thing was the flexibility of the service. Being able to arrange a call over the weekend made our lives so much easier and allowed us to move much quicker than we would have if we had to wait for a window of time that Craig and I were both free for an in-person meeting.
“We also ended up arranging our home insurance through Gail Reid Mortgage Services too – keeping everything in house was just so slick.”
For anyone thinking about reaching out to a mortgage advisor, what would be your advice?
“Before we got connected with the team at Gail Reid, everyone was telling us to get in touch with our bank for a mortgage. I’m so glad we didn’t go down that route as that would have only given us mortgage products from that bank and could have potentially resulted in us not getting a good deal – or no deal at all.
“Going through a broker like Gail Reid Mortgage Services opened up a pool of options from a whole host of lenders and gave us flexibility to find a deal that worked for us – we never needed to look anywhere else. You’ve really got nothing to lose by going to Gail Reid.”
Our advisors at Gail Reid Mortgage Services are ready to help you climb the property ladder…