The Intermediary –- May 2026 - Flipbook - Page 92
Meet The Broker
MortgagesBooked
Marvin Onumonu speaks with Lee Horton, co-founder at
MortgagesBooked and broker at Bluewave Mortgages & Protection
What led you to become a
broker?
Going back many years, I actually
had quite an unconventional early
adulthood. In my late teens and early
twenties, I spent a number of years
travelling the world and working
as a water sports instructor. I was
teaching windsurfing, sailing and
similar activities, doing seasons
abroad and even moving to live
in Australia for a while. My wife
and I also spent a year living in
New Zealand.
At that point in my life, I didn’t
really know what I wanted to do as
a long-term career. I always had a
strong interest in property and knew
that property was ‘a big thing’ for
me, but I had never bought a house
myself and didn’t know any real
experts in the field.
Eventually, I realised that if I
genuinely wanted to get into the
property industry, the best way to
do it was to work directly within
it. So, when we came back from
New Zealand, I decided to retrain.
Around 2009-10, I fully committed
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The Intermediary | May 2026
to becoming a mortgage broker, and
I’ve been in the role ever since.
What would you say sets
MortgagesBooked apart?
MortgagesBooked is a very new
venture – we went live in midFebruary. The idea behind it has
been in my head for a number of
years. I just never quite knew how to
execute it.
For a long time I was in employed
roles, up until 2022. That year I
decided I’d reached a point where
I knew enough, and I knew enough
people who had made the leap from
being employees in relatively secure,
‘cushy’ roles into running their
own businesses.
Once I went self-employed and
set up my own mortgage firm, I
found myself buying leads from the
big players – names like Unbiased
and other aggregators that many
brokers will recognise. I was using a
combination of these providers, and
I quickly realised that I wasn’t really
functioning as a mortgage broker
at all. I was essentially running my
own call centre. The leads were just
names and numbers. Many of them
either didn’t remember filling out
forms or denied ever having done so,
and they certainly weren’t expecting
a call.
I was working from 9am until
8pm most days, constantly on the
phone, chasing people I’d paid
good money to contact, and often
getting very little in return. That
experience made it clear to me that
there had to be a better way to grow
a brokerage, and more broadly, a
better way to structure the lead
generation industry.
MortgagesBooked is my answer to
that: a platform focused on quality,
pre-booked appointments rather
than cold, unengaged leads.
What other issues are
currently affecting
brokers?
One of the biggest problems is the
sheer number of so-called lead
generators and lead marketers who
have appeared in the market. There
are far too many people promising
