Habito almost cost me my mortgage and house purchase
1
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.
Reviewed on: 5th February 2018