Mark Graves, former managing director of Mortgages Direct, has launched Linear Financial Services (LFS) to provide mortgage advisory services to independent estate agents.
The company has signed its first deal with estate agency Chancellors, to provide for its 54 branches, looking to have around one adviser to every two outlets.
LFS will be supported by the Zurich Mortgage Network, as well as several UK lenders, which Graves was unable to name. In the case of Chancellors, Graves said the advisers would be LFS employees.
However, advisers using LFS need not be staff, and could be retained on the books of estate agents already employing them depending on the situation.
Graves said LFS would work on a commission and not a fee basis. He wanted to have around 200 advisers using LFS by the end of next year.
Graves said: “The model will either be that I employ the person, which is what I have done with Chancellors, or the other model is that the person is already employed at the moment by the estate agents and they can keep employing that person, but I put a business management package in place and will manage those people and they will be appointed representatives through me.” Graves said he would also organise conveyancing and surveyor services for those wishing it, and the model would enable LFS to provide whatever an estate agency needed to operate a complete mortgage advisory service.
James Scott-Lee, managing director of Chancellors, said: “We are excited at the proposal that Mark Graves has put forward to provide expert mortgage advice in our branches, backed by the strength of the Zurich Mortgage Network infrastructure. With Graves’ support we have tailor-made a mortgage model unique to the Chancellor Group.”
