Mortgage and Credit Card Query

MisterMotivated

Hi all,


Having been living in a rented property for the last 4 months, I'm now looking to buy another house, so, I'm after some quick advice. This has probably been covered before, but I can't seem to find any related threads at the moment.


Anyway, I have 3 credit cards, with a limit of ~£7k each. One has a balance of £6k (will be cleared before house purchase) while the others are clear except for small purchases made each month to satisfy DD requirements for my Halifax Reward accounts. If I close these credit cards, I'd potentially have 2 of my Halifax Reward accounts downgraded (I know they're now only paying £2 a month each but still I'd like to keep them). The last time I took out a mortgage, I closed all my credit cards in advance but this time I wonder, will it make a significant difference to the mortgage application if all three cards are still open but with minimal/zero balances?


I know there are alternative 'manufactured' Direct Debit options I could go with, but keeping these credit cards open would be the least hassle. I'll have more DD's to spread around once I buy a house so won't be an issue in the future.


Thanks in advance.

LRmortgage

It’s likely that closing them won’t make any difference / won’t help you getting a mortgage.

Especially if your credit file is good and clean and affordability isn’t an issue then you should be fine.

Don’t rack up any balances on them between now and completion.

MisterMotivated

Thanks for the quick reply. No plans to rack up any sort of balance - the £6k one is a 0% BT which I'll clear shortly, the other have expired hence the minimum spending. I just wondered whether the mortgage lender would see me having instant access to ~21k credit as a risk.


Affordability isn't an issue, although during my last mortgage application, they didn't believe my living costs were so low, so they just used their own figures. The advisor basically said he thought I was wildly underestimating all my bills, but then had the cheek to ask "Wow, how have you managed to save that much so quickly?" when asking about my deposit.