Do I have a chance of getting this mortgage?

reliquit

Around 2012/13/14 my wife and I had almost £50k in credit card debts, and due to a sudden and unexpected change of circumstances which saw our joint income fall from just over £80k per annum to around £22k, we found ourselves unable to meet our commitments and ultimately entered into an IVA.Our biggest single creditor was Intelligent Finance to whom I owed a little over £11k.

Fast forward to February last year, our IVA completed successfully and as the final step we were obliged to take out an Equity Release mortgage to make a final payment. The mortgage was arranged through a specialist broker recommended by our IVA Supervisor. We were told that as part of that service, after a full year had passed the same specialist broker would attempt to find us a cheaper mortgage to replace both the Equity Release mortgage and our existing and VERY expensive main mortgage. The broker has informed us that a mortgage has been found which will be at 2.99% for 5 years and the repayments will be approx £230 per month less than we are currently paying. The total term will only be 9 years so even if the cost rises after year 5 it won't be a complete disaster.

But on reading the offer letter which arrived today, I see that the lender they are recommending is Halifax - the same banking group as Intelligent Finance. I have signed the forms and will return them tomorrow - and then wait. I just wondered what people thought. Will Halifax go ahead, do you think, or will the IF debt scupper this.

MWT

If you already had a mortgage, that 'Equity Release' mortgage was probably not an Equity Release product but a 2nd charge mortgage.

It does seem a little odd that the specialist broker would try to take you back to another member of the same group in these circumstances, I assume they have been made fully aware of the IVA and the involvement of Intelligent Finance?

You can't assume it will fail as hopefully the broker has done their homework, but if it fails it would probably be a good time to consider using an adverse specialist broker of your own choice if the current one is missing rather basic concerns like this...

reliquit

MWT said:

....., I assume they have been made fully aware of the IVA and the involvement of Intelligent Finance?...

Initially I assumed that too, but now I am beginning to wonder. They definitely know that we have been in an IVA, and that it completed successfully last year. But they have never asked me for any details about the companies that we had debts with, and I presume that GDPR would have prevented Grant Thornton from disclosing those details to them.

MWT

I would suggest that you give them a call and make sure they have all the relevant details just in case...

reliquit

UPDATE: I just had a call from the broker to say that Halifax have accepted us and the paperwork is in its way. I won't be celebrating until the documents are actually in my hands, but it sounds very promising.