Credit ladder? Reporting rent on credit file

gillian3011

Hi, just wondering if people would recommend credit ladder or similar scheme, where they report your rent payments to Experian to improve the credit file. 

I’d be worried about allowing access to my bank account information even in a read only format. 

Also is it really helpful, doesn’t the credit report know I pay rent every month as I’ve got no arrears shown  on there and they know we rent so would this system really improve anything on my scores? 

Any thoughts?

MovingForwards

Your scores are not seen, or used, by any financial institutions, it's the content within the report eg credit commitments, is everything paid on time, are you on the electoral roll.

What are you trying to achieve?

gillian3011

MovingForwards said:

Your scores are not seen, or used, by any financial institutions, it's the content within the report eg credit commitments, is everything paid on time, are you on the electoral roll.

What are you trying to achieve?

I guess I understood it to mean that our rent payments would ‘count’ towards us looking like good lenders and getting a better rate. 

I sort of understand the bit of the lenders not using the score but looking at your affordability but is rent payments on time for the last 20+yrs taken into consideration without using the credit ladder system? It makes it sound like it’s not?! And people are forever telling me about ‘dead money’ I guess I just kind of want our rent payments to mean something and help us get a good mortgage deal when the time comes.

eddddy

gillian3011 said:

I guess I understood it to mean that our rent payments would ‘count’ towards us looking like good lenders and getting a better rate. 

I sort of understand the bit of the lenders not using the score but looking at your affordability but is rent payments on time for the last 20+yrs taken into consideration without using the credit ladder system? It makes it sound like it’s not?! And people are forever telling me about ‘dead money’ I guess I just kind of want our rent payments to mean something and help us get a good mortgage deal when the time comes.

By using credit ladder, your rent payments will be recorded on Experian's "Rental Exchange" database.

Landlords and banks can pay Experian to access your rent payment history if they want to - if you give consent first.

So a future landlord might choose to access your payment history. It's up to the landlord to decide what notice they take of that payment history, and whether they prefer one potential tenant over another, because one is on the database and the other isn't.

The same applies to banks - it's up to them what notice they take of your rent payment history, and what conclusions they draw if you are / are not on the database.

Banks will also ask to see a few months of your bank statements, which will also show your rental payments.

MovingForwards

For the mortgage, all I did was a transaction list showing where I had made the rent payments.

You don't need to go to the effort of credit ladder.

I know what you mean about rent being dead money, it's not as it's put a roof over your head.