Pls suggest steps to improve Credit Rating for future Mortgage

mnj1x

Hi,

I (and my wife) intend to step onto the property ladder in about 6 months time.

Can people suggest some steps we can take now to improve our credit rating during these intervening 6 months period ? ( so that we can land a competetive mortgage when we buy a property).

The basic issue with us will be that we are not EU citizens but rather permanent residents settled in UK for the last 2 years. Hence our name is not on the electoral roll.

We both are in permanent full time jobs with a combined annual income of £60k. We are looking for a flat in Greater London area ( £160k to 210k). We will be able to arrange a deposit of about £20k.

We bank with HSBC and have had credit cards from it for the last 2 years. Since we mostly pay our credit card bills in full and hardly ever utilise our bank overdraft, we were sitting merrily about our credit rating until (thanks to this forum) we realised that HSBC does not report to CAs for good accounts.
Apart from HSBC MC and quite a few mobile phone contracts, we have not taken any credit or loan from anywhere.

regards,
Jan

herbiesjp

As long as you have permanent right to reside the nationality issue should not be a problem.

Your credit rating is a subjective measure used by lenders, and each lender places a different emphasis on different issues. So you might be worrying about nothing. One lender might say yes and another might say no. As long as you have no "bad" credit history you will normally find a lender to help you.