Help! Declined mortgage with Halifax due to credit score. What lender now??p

Armst2k

Hi. We are New to this.... Hoping to get some help from the forum. I will explain our situation:

We have had a mortgage with Halifax for 10 years now, and are planning on moving house. We have a new home in mind and offer accepted. We did not think it would have been an issue to remortgage with Halifax as we were only borrowing an extra £17k for the new house, are not in arrears with Halifax and as we overpay on our mortgage every month we have proved we can afford it.
Halifax declined my application instantly in 10 minutes over the phone. Their reason, our credit reports on Experian.

We requested our reports from Experian, and discovered they are not great! They are Fair (760-900) not good.... Not bad. Just fair.

We sought advice from a financial advisor/mortgage broker instead of applying for mortgages with other lenders.
I hoped a mortgage broker would approach the underwriters at Halifax . We have a 30% deposit for our new house (so 70% LTV) .... We both have good stable well paid jobs. No debts. No credit card balances. And I had hoped the underwriters could look at all of our situation not just credit report.

But it was bad news again. The underwrites sad no based on our credit.

Where do we go from here???? Is there any other mortgage lenders out there we could approach. I know that applying for lots of credit can harm our credit score.... So I want to try avoid that if possible.

One more thing.... We are in N.Ireland and some lenders are not available here.

Any help/advice much appreciated.

Thrugelmir

What's on your credit file?

Bonfire_Bride

The score isn't really relevant to the lenders.

What information does the score contain?

Underwriters usually DO look at the whole scenario (I work with them all day-although not mortgage ones) - so there must be SOMETHING showing up?

I'm sure some more knowledgeable forum members will be along soon. Try not to panic though..

It would also be useful to know incomes - as although you have been able to afford overpayments - it could be an affordability issue?

ACG

As above - forget the score its worthless.
What is on your credit report? Missed/Late payments/defaults etc?

Why not use a broker? Let them do what they do on a daily basis.

Armst2k

Thankyou guys for the replies.

On our credit reports my husband has two defaults with small balances. (£331 & £180) they are from years ago when he was made redundant. Although he cleared the balances 4 weeks ago they are still not showing as cleared on his credit report.
Halifax queried these two defaults - despite them being paid off the credit report is not reflecting this.
On my credit report I have a few old defaults. No balances though.

I doubt it was anything to do with affordability. Our mortgage broker checked our incomes and we can afford a mortgage £100'000 over our current loan value!! So it's not that. :-(

What can we do from here. We have cleared balances on report. So what is done is done on CF. Opening credit cards will not reflect in our CF anytime soon. Do any know of lenders who will consider old defaults??

chanz4

100% will be the defaults

Thrugelmir

Armst2k wrote: »

On our credit reports my husband has two defaults with small balances. (£331 & £180) they are from years ago when he was made redundant. Although he cleared the balances 4 weeks ago they are still not showing as cleared on his credit report.

Why the time taken to clear them? Doesn't look good that the only reason you've bothered to clear them is that you now wish to remortgage. Part of the credit checking process is to profile potential borrowers.

Armst2k

Thrugelmir,
Some were cleared 2012, apart from the one for £331. We hadn't heard from them for years. Assumed everything was settled until we requested credit report. Them we chased them to pay.