Ken Sives, owner of Re/Max Property Plus, based in Larne, NI, said he continually found lenders had a limited presence in Ulster and he often had to chase lenders to complete cases.
He said: “I don’t know how they expect to get business from us when they don’t have anyone in NI. I might get loads of e-mails from lenders but what I need is someone to come and chat to me for 15 minutes and explain all the product options and rates available to me.”
Sives believed very few lenders had a presence in the province, while many had no one person he could deal with.
He pointed to a recent case involving the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), where his contact was based in Birmingham but he ended up being passed to several people in different departments and a chain of house purchases almost collapsed.
“I was told the offer would be turned around in five days but when it wasn’t I spoke to my business manager. However, he ended up passing me on and I had to rant and rave for nearly a week to finally get my mortgage offer. It seemed the guy who was trying to help NI brokers didn’t have much clout in the system and I had to sort everything out.”
An RBS Intermediary Partners spokesperson said: “Our model is based on having a point of contact on the phone for each region. These phone teams act like business managers but we do have someone on the ground in NI who meets brokers. However, people in NI shouldn’t be disadvantaged if they use our phone-based model.”
