About the adviser
Co-founder and Director · Niche Advice Limited
I co-founded Niche Advice in 2008 with Richard Stokes, and I have advised on mortgages and specialist property finance ever since. My work is the cases the high street turns down — self-employed and limited-company directors, foreign nationals and visa holders, landlords with portfolios or HMOs, people with adverse credit, and short-term bridging finance where a deal has to happen to a deadline.
I am not a marketing person writing about mortgages. I work this business every day, and everything on this site comes out of cases I have actually handled.
- Co-founder and Director, Niche Advice Limited — established 2008
- Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) qualified
- Firm authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority — FRN 750263
- More than 380 videos published on the @nicheadvice YouTube channel since 2017
- Regular contributor to the mortgage trade press
How I got here
Most people who end up broking mortgages came into it from banking or estate agency. I came into it from the other side — from design, and then from mortgage technology.
My career started in 1999 at Network Data Limited, as an internal graphic designer, and moved through PR and marketing from there. That period put me inside mortgage data and mortgage systems — the kind of software a broker sits in front of to work out which lender will actually take a case.
That matters more than it sounds. Sourcing software is a set of rules about who lends to whom and on what. Spend your early career inside those rules and you stop seeing lenders as brands and start seeing them as criteria. It is still exactly how I look at a case today: not “who has a good rate”, but “whose rules does this person actually fit”.
From 2003 I spent seven years at The Mortgage Times Group, which grew into one of the UK’s largest mortgage networks. I owned marketing, PR and advertising, managed the corporate relationships, and organised more than 200 nationwide roadshow events for mortgage intermediaries. If you were broking in that decade, there is a reasonable chance you sat in one of those rooms.
Meeting Richard, and starting Niche Advice
I met Richard Stokes at The Mortgage Times Group. I ran the internal sales and marketing side; Richard was responsible for product development, distribution and lender relationships. We shared an office for years.
That is where the shape of Niche Advice came from. Richard had spent his time with lenders and products; I had spent mine with brokers, technology and communication. We established Niche Advice in 2008, and we still split the firm the same way — Richard leads compliance, operations and HR; I lead sales, marketing and technology. We are equal partners, we both advise clients directly, and we cross-cover each other’s cases.
Between 2013 and 2017 I was also a director of Niche Funding Limited, arranging commercial and bridging finance for professional landlords and property owners. That is where a great deal of my short-term finance experience was built.
It is a deliberately small firm. That is the point of it, and I will come back to that below.
What I specialise in
People do not usually come to me first. They come to me after a bank has said no, or after a broker has told them their case is too complicated, or because they have worked out on their own that their situation is not going to fit a website form. Every one of the areas below is a place where the answer depends on the lender’s rules rather than on the applicant being “good” or “bad”.
Self-employed, contractors and limited-company directors
An automated affordability calculator reads one year of accounts, retained profit, or a day rate and returns a number that has almost nothing to do with what you actually earn. The lenders who read those structures properly are a minority of the market, and they each read them differently. Getting this right is mostly about choosing the lender before you choose the product. If you are a director paid in salary and dividends, our director income mortgage calculator shows how differently lenders read the same set of accounts.
Foreign nationals and visa holders
Skilled Worker, Spouse, Dependant, Health and Care, Graduate, refugee status, indefinite leave to remain still pending, applicants living overseas. The panel that will genuinely consider these cases is narrow, the criteria move, and the difference between a decline and a completion is very often which lender you approached, not what you earn.
Bridging and short-term finance
Auction purchases, chain breaks, probate, light and heavy refurbishment, HMO conversion. Bridging is the area where I am asked the most and where I say no the most, because a bridge is only ever as good as the exit. If you cannot tell me how the loan gets repaid, the deal does not exist yet. You can model a case on our bridging loan calculator before you speak to anyone.
Buy-to-let, HMO and portfolio landlords
First-time landlords through to large portfolios, personal name versus limited company or SPV, HMO and multi-unit. I have been a landlord as well as a broker, which changes the conversation.
Adverse credit and declined cases
CCJs, defaults, IVAs, discharged bankruptcy, and the specific job of recovering a case after a decline. A decline is information — it tells you which rule you hit. It does not tell you the case is dead.
Right to Buy, remortgaging and the ordinary cases too
Not everything we do is complex. A large part of the work is ordinary residential and remortgage business for people who simply want an adviser who will explain it rather than sell to them.
What I will tell you that a comparison site won’t
I would rather lose the enquiry than put someone into the wrong product.
I get calls from people who have watched a lot of videos and decided that short-term finance is going to make them money. Sometimes they are right. Frequently they are not, and the honest answer is that the deal does not stack — the numbers do not survive contact with the fees, or the exit is a hope rather than a plan, or the duller option they already had was the correct one. Telling somebody that costs me the case. It is still the right answer, and it is the reason people come back years later.
Three things I say on almost every call:
- A headline loan-to-value is a gross number. By the time the interest and the fees for the term have been taken off it, the money that actually arrives is meaningfully less. The right question is never “what LTV will you lend?” — it is “what is the net, and is it enough?”
- There is very rarely a single rule. Lenders treat the same property, the same income and the same credit history differently, and a large part of what you are paying a broker for is knowing which of them is currently looking at your kind of case kindly.
- With any short-term borrowing, the exit is the deal. Sale, refinance, completion of works, an inheritance settling — whatever it is, it has to be real, and it has to have room in it for things running late.
I generally want to tell you not just the good side, the down side.
How I work
You speak to me
We are not a thousand-person brokerage. When you make an enquiry you deal with an actual adviser — me, or Richard — from the first conversation through to completion, not a call centre and then a handover to someone you have never met.
You get the realistic answer first
Before anything is submitted anywhere, I will tell you what I think is achievable and what is not. That includes saying that borrowing is not the right move, or that a case is better placed somewhere other than with us.
Plain English, and the whole picture
No jargon walls, no selective quoting of the good bits. If there is a condition, a cost or a risk in a recommendation, it gets said out loud.
The process
- A conversation. What you are trying to do, and by when.
- A realistic view. Whether it works, what it costs, and what could stop it.
- Lender selection. Matching the case to the rules that actually fit it.
- Submission and management through to completion, by the person you spoke to.
Registration and regulatory status
Niche Advice Limited was established in 2008 and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. All advice standards and all published promotions are reviewed by Richard Stokes, the firm’s compliance-responsible director.
You can verify the firm on the FCA Register under FRN 750263, and at Companies House under company number 06599033. Richard’s profile is here.
You don’t have to take my word for it
The strongest thing I can offer a stranger deciding whether to trust me with a mortgage is a large body of work they can inspect before they ever pick up the phone.
There are more than 380 videos on the @nicheadvice channel, the earliest from 2017 and still running today. It is not a highlight reel. It is years of working through the same questions clients actually ask: buy-to-let structure and limited companies, remortgaging, Right to Buy, bad credit, bridging dangers, auction finance, visa and expat criteria, what documents a lender will want, and what a decline actually means. Some of it is uncomfortable — several of the most-watched videos are essentially me explaining why a plan will not work.
Everything published is regulated promotional content, carries the required risk warnings, and is reviewed by Richard before it goes out.
In the press
I am regularly asked to comment on the mortgage market by the trade press. Two titles host a contributor page under my name:
Selected pieces:
- Seven things mortgage lenders can do to help landlords — Mortgage Soup
- Affordability strategies that can make or break a deal — Mortgage Introducer
- Wrangle over training fees for mortgage candidates — Money Marketing
Journalists can find contact details and downloadable assets on the press page.
Questions people ask me before they get in touch
Will I actually speak to you, or to an assistant?
Me, or Richard. We are a two-director firm and we both run our own client books. Whoever you start with is who you finish with.
My bank has already declined me. Is it worth talking to you?
Usually yes. A decline tells you which lender’s rule you hit; it does not tell you that every lender would reach the same answer. What matters is understanding exactly why the decline happened before anything else is submitted, because a second badly-aimed application makes things harder, not easier.
Do you only do complicated cases?
No. A lot of the work is ordinary residential and remortgage business. The specialist end is where we are unusual, not where we are limited.
Will you tell me if I shouldn’t borrow?
Yes, and I do it often. If the numbers do not work, or the exit on a short-term loan is not real, I would rather say so than arrange it.
Talk to me about your case
Tell me what you are trying to do and roughly when you need it done. I will tell you honestly whether I think it works, what it is likely to cost, and what could get in the way — before anything is submitted anywhere.
Phone 020 7993 2044 · Email [email protected]
Niche, Unit F3, The Addington Business Centre, Vulcan Way, New Addington, Croydon, CR0 9UG
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