Small credit card balance when submitting full mortgage application?

onthemend88 · 10 January 2020 at 9:20AM

Good morning everyone

We will be submitting our mortgage application within the next few weeks and nerves are staring to kick in.

We will be going through an adverse lender as we have historical defaults and CCJ's (all of which have been paid and most recent being almost 3 years old).

We use our credit cards for everyday purchases such as food shopping, fuel, cleaning products, toiletries etc and pay the cc off in full each month.

My question is, usually by the time the CRA get the updates (around the 8th of each month on our credit reports), there is usually a small balance of around £200-£300 from where we have used the credit cards for the above since getting paid.

I am worried that having any debt outstanding will look bad to an adverse lender and just wanted some advise as to whether or not we better off not using our credit cards at all after they have been paid off this month or will we be ok just continue as normal and input the outstanding balance on our application when the time comes?

I know I am probably massively overthinking this but we are first time buyers with previous adverse credit and just want everything to go as smoothly as possible.

Thanks in advance.