What are my chances with Halifax Mortgages

BRB-79

Hi everyone, I wanted to share my recent milestone with my personal bankruptcy and gauge people's optimism regarding what happened yesterday.

Basically, after a long 6 years, my bankruptcy dropped off my credit file on August 10th. Such a relief to see that gone after such a long time. I did the usual, clearing up the incorrect information with creditors around default dates thanks to all the useful help and advice on this site. There's still one credit card for MBNA that's listed as defaulted on August 28th 2009, for some reason they refused to date it August 10th 2009. There's also a defaulted mortgage account dated October 19th 2009. I contacted Intelligent Finance several times about this over the years but they are sticking with it, apparently the date the property was officially repossessed. Yes - there's a repossession and I want to get another mortgage.....

My wife and I own a house currently with her on the mortgage and me listed as an interested party. We have around £125,000 equity in it and some savings. I have been talking to a Mortgage broker and explained my position - he felt that with the BR now gone, I would stand a good chance of getting a mortgage. So yesterday he called me and said that there were 2 high street lenders with "no specific criteria about repossessions" other than they judge each case on merit. When he told me they were Halifax and TSB my heart sank - I had a credit card on my BR with Halifax that had around £10k on the default balance, and I also had some debt with Lloyds TSB as it was back then, also included in the BR. I did some reading up and to my horror, also found that Intelligent Finance is a member of Bank of Scotland - as is Halifax (and TSB?). So on the face of it, chances of getting a new mortgage looked very bleak with either of them.

What we are asking for is a mortgage of about £250k, with around £130k deposit, so a pretty good LTV almost 66%. We have no debt other than roughly £2k on credit cards between us which is our monthly spend and gets paid off in full. Combined salary is £125,000 before any bonuses and my wife's credit history is clean.

I mentioned about the Intelligent Finance repossession (there was a shortfall of £32k, also covered by the BR) and the mortgage advisor came back to me to say that he had spoken to his Business Development Manager at Halifax who didn't feel this would be too much of a problem based on the great affordability we have, and great LTV. But that it's ultimately down to the credit check team that do the full application.

Anyway, based on that we went on with a decision in principle and got it, much to my surprise. We answered Yes to "have there ever been any repossessions" and No to "have there been any bankruptcies registered in the last 6 years". The DIP came back in a few seconds and gave us approval to borrow up to £500,000 - clearly just based on our salaries at this stage.

I've read lots of stories about people being successful with Halifax on this site but nobody seems to have been a previous creditor that I could see. And I definitely haven't seen anyone mention being a previous mortgage customer of the group, and still get a new deal with them.

I'm remaining pessimistic for now - what do you think are my chances??

BRB-79

Nobody? Doesn't look good! Oh well, wish me luck :-)

missyp123

i will be interested to see how you get on as we are also hoping to get a mortgage once our br falls off too. we will not have as much ltv as you, but are working hard at it!
halifax were also our mtg provider when were we repossessed :-/

atm we are hoping to go with nationwide as we have the deposit isa savings accouts and our current accounts with them.

hope you have a happy ending

BRB-79

Quick update: Sold our property yesterday and put in an offer which was accepted on a new house. Spoke to the mortgage advisor again and he still felt that Halifax was a good option, but having re-read the decision in principle statement, it says the application would be referred to the credit team to investigate any outstanding debt with the HBOS group. He called Halifax this morning and was told it was a 50/50 chance of getting an approval.

He has now recommended a mortgage with TSB which is apparently no longer part of HBOS or Lloyds Banking Group. The rate for the 2 year mortgage was 1.84% which is slightly better than Halifax, and their decision in principle came back as an accept as well. He said that it was also subject to the credit team review for any outstanding debt with TSB group which there should be none. We went ahead with the full application and I have paid the £825 up front fee for the surveys to be done. He said that unlike with the DIP, the full application just said it was accepted and didn't mention anything about it being referred to the credit team for debt within TSB group so I am hoping that's a good sign. Now we just have to wait and see what happens, fingers crossed.

owlet

Best of luck to you, let us know how you get on. It's always good to hear success stories even though I'm not likely to have a mortgage again!!

BRB-79

Latest news is that 2 hours after I put in the full application for our mortgage with TSB, we found out that the buyer for our property was pulling out of the sale. So there has been a mad panic for the last week trying to get someone else interested in our house.

Meanwhile we are keeping quiet to the vendor for the property that we want to buy, in the hope that we can get another buyer in place for ours before it becomes a problem.

On Friday last week, 3 days after the mortgage application was submitted, I had a call from the mortgage broker asking on behalf of TSB about my address history as I changed the electoral roll information a few months after I told them I moved in. So they just wanted to clarify that.

Yesterday I submitted evidence of our savings, but we still don't have evidence of the deposit coming from the sale of our current property. Mortgage broker says that if we get a Yes decision from TSB, they can issue that subject to a satisfactory survey on the new place (which we have deferred until the end of the process) but we are going to need a sale memorandum for our current place soon so we can show we have enough cash to pay 33% for the new property.

So today is 5 days since the application was lodged and we haven't had any more news yet. I don't know what I am more worried about, the decision from TSB or not being able to find a new buyer for our place in time.

Very stressful! will keep you posted.

BRB-79

We finally had the survey and valuation for TSB done today after various delays. At 6pm I got the text message I've been waiting for all this time. Offer Issued! Can't tell you how relieved I am!! Almost 6 years to the day I had to declare myself bankrupt, and have my flat voluntarily repossessed and we secured a brilliant deal on a mortgage with TSB!

I've tried to live the model life after BR and fully accept things should have been different. The repossession as well was a huge worry especially when you read all the stories on here over 6 years.

Don't give up hope people, things can and do get better after a while. I was really fortunate with the finances I have with my wife, our equity in the house we own in her name came to about £100k. We have bought a house for £395,000 and have a mortgage secured with TSB for £270,000. The difference was made up with savings. For now our combined income is around £125k per year which we work hard for. I have no idea what kind of internal rules TSB have for to allow us to qualify for a mortgage with them, I just know we had enough.

I am so grateful for all the positive advice this great forum has given me over the last 6 years, members just want to help.

Over the moon!!!

LoveLifeAgain

Many congratulations, BRB-79, it is good to hear you are now doing so well and thank you for posting. :beer:

missyp123

Brilliant news! :T

Strachan

Thank you for sharing