Odd u-turn when getting a Halifax mortgage promise

sh856531

Hi all

My partner and I are first time buyers and have just been in to the Halifax to get one of their mortgage promises.

My income is 48K, my partner's is 28K. We have one baby daughter (hence the need for a bigger home!). My partner has a 6K loan outstanding that will be paid off in 2 years. I have no debt at all.

We went through all the questions with the advisor and she told us we both had very good credit scores. She then told us that they could offer us something like £240K, which is around about what I was expecting, but far more than we want.

Unfortunately, right at the end of meeting the advisor put my passport number into the system and something very odd happened - the amount they would offer was reduced by about half to 128K!

I asked how that can be, because it did seem to be entering my passport number that tripped the system into reconsidering. The girl said that my credit score was still very high but that the "affordability" score had changed. I felt this rather odd because a passport number obviously doesnt effect my income our outgoings!

Can anyone help explain what has happened as this might cause us a substantial issue in getting a new home!

For the avoidance of doubt I have now debt, no defaults, I'm on the electoral role and have worked in some capacity since the age of 12. I've been with my current employer on a pretty decent salary for the past 4 years.

Any advice gratefully received

S

Edit: The mortgage we are after would be for more like 138K, not the 240 they originally offered

sh856531

One quick adjunct to this.

The only thing I could think of that might adversely effect my ability to borrow is that even though I don't use them - I did have access to quite a large amount of credit.

This took the form of 2 credit cards with a combined credit limit of 11K and 2 overdrafts available with limits of 1.5K each.

As such, even though I'm very debt averse - I could in theory go and run up 14K worth of debt in minutes. I can see why this would be bad!

The thing is, the only reason I never closed these accounts down was because the lenders in each case made it a total ballache to close the account. One wanted me to write a letter and so I just thought $%^ it - I won't bother.

Does this seem likely as the reason why Halifax started freaking out at the last hurdle? She specifically said that my credit score was really good (because I don't default) but that my "affordability" was now poor.

I'm just speculating and I don;t understand how entering my passport number was the thing that managed to let them connect these dots - but does this seem likely as the root cause?

Thanks again

S