Hi, I'm Rob.

And I'm Rob. And this is Ask Rob and Rob.

Hey everyone, welcome to Ask Rob and Rob, the show where you give us your wonderful questions

and we give you what we hope are some wonderful answers in return.

It is super simple for you to submit your question, whether it be for this show or the Sunday times.

Rob, would you like to explain once again what that easy process is? Oh, surely everyone knows by now, but just in case, it's propertyhub.net slash ask. If you can find your way to that webpage, then you can leave us a written question for our Sunday Times column, see yourself in the paper, your mum would be very proud, or you can leave us a voicemail, which is actually our preferred option, because then we get to play your lovely voice on the show. Okay, let's have listened to our first question.

This one is from Dan. Hi, Rob and Rob. Thanks for your ongoing content. This has meant that we're in the process of buying our fifth buy to let in just three years. Our aim is to continue to buy at least one a year until we retire, but this will probably increase with the snowball effect

you've talked of. My question is, and it's one I think you've had before, is with all the

purchases, we've noticed our credit rating keeps taking a huge time that we are credit-checked

by the mortgage companies, even though we're buying through our limited company. We've been checked

twice for our current purchase, we change mortgage company partway through for a better rate. These checks become more and more regular as we go, and it's slowly reducing my perfect experience score down to nothing. You've got any thoughts or advice around this? Dan, you're in the realm of champagne problems, but it's a real problem, but well done. But the fact you're building a snowball at such a pace that that is going to become an issue is definitely a good sign. And I've got some practical advice for you, but before I give you that practical advice, I can give you a bit of comfort, which is that you are rightfully proud of your credit score, but actually, from a lender's point of view, your credit score doesn't matter that much. The score is pretty much a marketing number.

It's almost like something that's gamified that the agency is like to give you. But what lenders all will be looking at is the report behind that. So they're not going to write you off based on just the score. They'll look at the report. And if there are lots of applications for credit going in, but they're all clearly with Bight Let lenders, and it matches up with the portfolio spreadsheet that your broker will have given them because it's something they have to do for portfolio landlords,

then they'll understand. They do this every day. It's not going to spook them. So you can relax because the issue that you've described isn't really as much of an issue as it appears to be. But it is possible that you can get yourself into a situation where there are so many applications flying around

that your credit file is getting hit all the time and it gets confusing and you start getting lenders

asking questions or even putting it in the two hard pile. And the two main ways to avoid that.

The first is to avoid switching if you can mid application. So you're not making more than one

application per finance or refinance.

So you said that you changed for a better rate.

That can happen, but ideally it shouldn't if your broker has put you with an appropriate lender to start with.

Because generally, if rates drop, they'll drop across the market and you'll be able to get the

existing lender to honour that drop.

And if there is a difference between lenders, it's probably going to be so marginal that it's not going to compensate for the fees of making the switch in the first place. So that's one thing that your broker can help you do. And the other thing you're broker can help you do is minimise searches at all. So the other reason you might switch lenders is because you've got a decline. You're with a lender and at some point during the process they're going, oh, no, we don't want to do this after all. But a good specialist broker should stop that from happening because they should be able to speak to the business development manager at the lender at the very start and say, this is the client, these are their circumstances, this is the property. And as long as there's nothing unexpected that comes up during the process, they know all the facts up front and they should be able to give a pretty good indication of whether it will be yes or no before even a soft search is made at the start of the process. So Dan, thank you for your question. I hope you find that reassuring. Next up, we've got a question in from Joe. Hi Rob and Rob. Joe from London here. Thank you for all of your education over the years. I'm a long-term follower and I've actually bought two

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