Habito almost cost me my mortgage and house purchase
Almost cost me my mortgage and unhelpful when the bank screwed...
Read more Almost cost me my mortgage and unhelpful when the bank screwed up.
I applied for a mortgage last April through Habito. However, the lack of support and "greenness" of the Habito team meant that I had to wait 3 months for my mortgage to be approved, and was given false information multiple times.
Here are reasons why you shouldn't go with Habito:
- despite being "online first", the application tracker is not really updated by Habito or granular enough in terms of the mortgage steps. So it is close to useless.
- during the entire process, my mortgage case was passed to more than 5 Habito employees, like a conveyor belt, each one only responsible for a stage of the process. There was no continuity
- there is an online chat function, which is easier than email or phone. But that is only if your case manager replies promptly. Many times I was left waiting more than 24 hours for a reply, and had to call to chase.
- I was provided wrong information multiple times. The worst was when I was told by my case manager that my mortgage had been final approved, which is the step before exchange. Only to be told two days later that it was a mistake. The other time I was told that the valuation survey had been completed. But two weeks later, I was told it had not.
So if you want a trusted pair of hands with your house purchase and mortgage process, stick to a professional, tried and tested old school mortgage broker.
I get the feeling that Habito is just a fancy website, lots of VC money, and very green operational managers who think they can just hire a team to man a chat/call centre.
But mortgage brokering can be complicated, unfortunately Habito is of no help if things go wrong with your mortgage process. Which is why you want to go with a mortgage broker - to help you if things go wrong.
