Mortgage Advisor-An Age Old question

steve4mandy

Just got off the phone to a mortgage advisor, who I will probably use, liked her manner, and knowledge.

She was once a Nationwide underwriter, so I can see where we are heading!

Advised me to close all unused/zero balance credit cards and have a maximum of 2, although I would be carrying a balance on one of these?

I have had so much conflicting advice over this from high street lenders, could any mortgage professional put this one to bed for me please.

many thanks.

amnblog

if you have a clean file I suspect this was just 'something to say' to fill the gaps and sound knowledgable.

Cant see it making a major difference to your getting a mortgage.

Dave_Ham

Echo above, in 999 of 1000 this will make no difference

kingstreet

Thirded.

Only YBS Group has an issue with available/unused credit. Never had it raised by any other lender.

dunstonh

back in my days of manual decision making, we did consider the risk of "available" credit. i.e. how much could someone raise on credit cards if they went to town on them and in some cases, we would ask for unused cards to be closed. However, we are going back a long way and that would only happen on tight cases where criteria was being stretched.

I suspect that it would be a rare thing to happen nowadays though. A lot of things we did years ago dont happen now and that is always a problem when you hark back to old times. Things move on and you are not there to see the changes. So, old information about a lender can be obsolete and incorrect over time. That said, it is sensible to close off unused credit lines.

holly_hobby

As stated by Duns. it did used to make a difference before automated underwriting, and Woolwich were one of the culprits I recall whom didn't like copious amounts of rolling credit available.

TBH, let it go through as its (as once the cards are gone, they're gone, and you may no longer meet current criteria to later replace them). If it goes to manual UW, the UWriter at that point may suggest closing/reducing unused facilities (if that is the only status issue), which you can address as you wish.

Hope this helps

Holly x