Credit Check for House Rental

charlatan_2

Hi There

Looking at renting a house for the first time with my girlfriend, and she has defaults from her previous marriage due to her husband drinking mortgage payments, so am gonna get it in my name. The Estate agent will perform a credit check on me, and while I have some debt (a loan and credit card balance), my credit score is around 860 when I checked via Experian.

What I want to know, I have two credit cards I haven't used in months, both clear and both with £5000 available on each. Would my credit score improve if I were to cancel these cards, or would it not make any difference?

Thanks in advance.

Gingernutmeg

If your girlfriend wants to live with you in the property, then more than likely she will have to be credit checked too. Most LLs/LAs won't allow someone to live in a property unless they've been credit checked, regardless of who is actually paying the rent etc - also if she's over 18 then they'll probably want to put her on the agreement in some way. If your score isn't too bad and you're earning enough to cover the rent, then it probably won't be a massive problem if she doesn't score highly enough, but as I said regardless of that most places will insist on her being credit checked if she wants to use the house as a permanent address.

huntersc

Your score would be worse by canceling.