How banks do credit checks

babe-ruth

Hi, hoping there is some clever person on here who can help me out.

We are in the middle of house selling and depending if all goes well to completion we will have a sum of around £240k to bank. We are moving into one of our rental properties (with no mortgage) until we find somewhere else to buy.

We would like to take advantage of the Santander 123 account to stash 20k each (not sure what we will do with the rest yet but will need to be available in case we find a property that we want). My dilemma is do we apply for the 123 account now while we are still at our current address (and have good credit rating) or wait till we move to our rental property (because until we sell we don't have the 40k to put in them) The rental has previously been rented out for the past 15 years and i know that the last few tenants all had debt in fact whilst we have be renovating it a couple of debt collectors have knocked on looking for previous tenants.

Will it go against us if we apply after we have sold and moved to the address with bad debt against it? What to do :huh:

Reaper

It shouldn't unless you share the same surname as those with bad debts in which case they sometimes get confused.

babe-ruth

Thank you reaper, i don't understand how they do credit checks and exactly what they check so wasn't sure if the address would go against us. Thanks again for your reply

rb10

Credit histories are associated to a specific person, not an address. They identify you using your name, DoB and address, so you won't 'inherit' the poor credit history of someone who has lived in your property before you.

If you apply once you've moved house, then you'll need to tell the bank your previous address - this will be used to tie up your record and ensure they see all your existing accounts.

However, having lived at your address for <1 month may count (slightly) against you, so it could be preferable to apply before you move.

babe-ruth

Thanks RB10 for your reply.

babe-ruth

Think we may go ahead and open them before move. Although we won't be able to put the full £20k in we could probably manage to £500 each per month and i suppose it will make changing the direct debits (which i will organize myself) easier before the move - any thoughts?