credit rating :(

pilavas

Hello all,

This is my first post as i am very concerned about my credit rating.
I co-own a property with my brother who took an equity loan 5 years ago and ever since has been struggling with the mortgage( his side) I have been able to keep up with my payments and trying to help him too.

Since this arrangement isn't working out we have decided to sell the house i was on the phone with our mortgage company thinking i could tranfered the current mortgage onto my new property but the refused saying we have to clear the arrears and staying up to date for at least 12 months before they will consider giving me a mortgage, you can only imagine how frustrated i am now with my brother so i called him and explained the whole situation to him. I am just a computer engineer and he is an accountant ( part qualified i think).
he told me that he will get write a letter stating that the whole debt is his responsibility in order to help my credit rating.

1, My question now is can something like this be done ?
2, How else can i remove this bad rating from my file instead of waiting 6 years for it to clear.

I am married and my wife is going to Uni this year, but she will be working part time while studying.
I know I am in a bad situation with this but I will have a big deposit for my own property once the current one is sold.

Rafter

If the mortgage is in joint names then you are stuck regarding current lender regardless of whether your brother writes a letter.

Get hold of a copy of your own credit rating and see how that appears and whether the mortgage appears as a joint account or not.

It might be that once you have sold you can 'disocciate' yourself from your brother and apply to another lender without problems unless the arrears are on your credit file.

Otherwise, find yourself a good mortgage broker who can find lenders who will review the evidence that it was your brother who was the problem and that you have always been up to date.

Otherwise you might be stuck renting for a period until the arrears have aged. Hopefully the evidence of other credit on your file being up to date might help IF you can persuade a lender to look at your case in detail rather than a COMPUTER SAYS NO response.

Good luck

R

pilavas

Thanks you for the quick response. I was trying to buy him out of the property but that plan fell through straight away. If it has affected my credit rating how long will i have to wait before i can get a good mortgage ?, and don't tell me "how long is a piece of string" lol :P...

JohalaReewi

pilavas wrote: »

If it has affected my credit rating how long will i have to wait before i can get a good mortgage ?

There are two ways your credit history can be hit.
1) Via a financial link (or association). A joint mortage or bank account can create one of these. You can apply to have the link removed from your credit history once the account is closed (and thus there is no link).

2) Via the payment history on the mortgage. This will remain on your credit history for 6 years (from when the account is settled).