FTB Joint Mortgage - Mixed credit profiles

Graeme1978uk

Hi everyone,

Hoping to get a little bit of advice regarding applying for a mortgage. We are married with 4 children aged 4-16. I'm 41 and she is 33. She has an impeccable financial record, never missed a payment on anything in her life and earns approximately £26,000. I earn £33,000. There will be smallish salary increases for us both in April. We would be looking for a mortgage of at least £160,000 and currently have approximately £9k saved towards a deposit.

My financial record is poor and has been for some time. For too long I didn't budget properly, and buried my head in the sand when things did wobble and ended up taking out payday loans (although not since 2017) trying to make ends meet. It's only over the last year or two that I've got everything in order and paid my debts off, but I understand that the damage for the time being is done. If I was to take some positives from my current profile...

• I took out a Capital One credit card last July, paid minimum payments for the first few months and for the last 4 months have paid the full statement balance (and will continue do to so)
• The Very and Littlewoods accounts that I have are now both paid down to zero balance (but still currently open). Credit Limits are £1400 and £1200 respectively. Both have been paid off since January this year.
  
• I have paid off and closed a Barclaycard account that had a poor payment profile. (3 late payments in last 12 months). Card closed December 2019.
  

Looking back through credit reports, the things that I know will hurt us...

• One default on an old Natwest account. Defaulted April 2018, debt satisfied August 2018
• History of Payday loans, although many removed following affordability complaint and none since 2017.

As I've said above my wife's record is exemplary and for the last 6 months mine has too, and will continue to be going forward, I'm just worried there's too much damage? We are going to see a broker in a couple of weeks but wondered did any of the Mortgage Advisers here have any initial thoughts?

Many thanks

ACG

You are probably a touch early to be buying with your deposit as it is. If you can get your deposit to 10% there is some potential to get this placed in a couple of months. 
15% and it could probably be placed now. 

In the grand scheme of things your history is not too bad. Our kind of bread and butter case is 3-5 defaults, but I have one on my desk at the minute with 13. A one off default is not too bad, it is just that you either need a little more time or a bigger deposit (or both) but you are not a million miles off. 

Graeme1978uk

I made this thread back in March, but wanted to ask a bit of further advice (Thanks to @ACG for the initial advice)

I have continued to keep behaving on the credit front, paying everything on time and in full each month etc. I've had a slight pay increase since March and my current salary is now £34,878 with my wife's remaining at about £26,000

What has changed, is that we have been looking at a David Wilson Homes property on a new build nearby. The purchase price is £250k. We have £12.5k deposit ourselves (5%) and DWH are currently offering an additional 5% contribution for NHS staff which we also qualify for. We also qualify for 'Help to Buy' which would give us an additional 20% so from a few months ago looking for a 95% deposit, we are now looking at a 70% mortgage of approx £175k.

So we have a combined income of over £60k, the only financial commitments outside of standard bills is car finance totalling £380 per month.

With all that into consideration what to the advisers here think our changes would be? Thanks again for your time    

Graeme1978uk

Reading back there's also a typo in my original post. My default is from April 2017, not 2018.