Telling letting agent about historical bankruptcy

jonnydeppiwish!

You don’t need to declare it - you’ve paid it off and are now financially stable. Why disadvantage yourself because of a mistake 20 years ago?

bobster2

WonderingWanderer said:

Hi, apologies if this has been asked and answered before - I did a search but didn’t find an answer.

I’m interested in renting a property through the National Trust. On the application it stated “Please Note - If we proceed with your application onto the Credit Check stage, we will need to ask you whether you have ever been declared Bankrupt or if you have had any County Court Judgements against you.”.

I declared myself bankrupt nearly 20 years ago (stupidest decision of my entire life) and was discharged within a year. Since then I’ve built up a decent credit rating - 951 out of 999 - and there’s nothing untoward on my Experian credit score. I’ll still have to answer yes if they ask that question, though, and I’m worried it will completely scupper my chances. 

Do all agents do a previous bankruptcy check? Should I flag this with the National Trust agent before viewing, so I don’t waste their time (and my travel costs), or wait until after I’ve viewed the property to tell them? 

Go and view it. You may find, when it comes time to complete the actual form, the question you are asked is more specific - it may ask about bankruptcy/CCJs in the past 6 years or something like that. Which you can honestly answer "no" to.

Noneforit999

Depends on the question.

Does it literally say, have you ever been declared bankrupt?

If any forms don't ask, I wouldn't volunteer any more information than is specifically asked for. I wouldn't lie personally but the onus on them to do the due diligence checks, you don't have to provide information they haven't asked for. 

You may find it just asks about the last six years anyway, i.e. what is on your credit file. 

Schwarzwald

If you chose to be honest, I would proactively qualify the answer by stating the year / “more than 20 years ago”.
either say no or answer more than they ask for

WonderingWanderer

Thank you all. I really appreciate the advice. I definitely won’t be volunteering the information if I don’t have to. The question is often (as I’ve found many times when doing searches/comparisons for insurance) ‘have you ever been bankrupt’, to which, unfortunately, the only truthful answer is yes. Whereupon they won’t quote me or it’s an astronomical price. Not every company asks that question, so I just go with those who don’t, but quite a lot do. 

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that decisions that look like the easiest choice at the time can have very long term consequences!

user1977

WonderingWanderer said:

I did do a search of The Gazette, and it comes up if I put my full name in… it’s not the name I usually use, but presumably they’d want to see ID like passport/birth cert, and my full name is on those. It’s fairly distinctive - hyphenated first name (which I don’t use in every day life), middle and last names. 

My name's fairly unusual, but not unique. You couldn't safely assume something in the archives from 20 years ago is about me.

Oh blimey, I’m really conflicted! I don’t want to lie, and presumably I’m committing fraud if I do so

Technically, yes. But I can't see anybody being interested in that - the worst that might happen is they turn you down, so your only loss is the time and travel incurred.

mi-key

I wouldnt tell them. It was so long ago it has no relevance to your financial position now, which is what they really care about. As long as you pay the rent on time every month, agents really don't care about what you may have done years ago.

If by some tiny chance they did find out, you can just say you thought they were only relevant in the last 6 years, and as this was so long ago you didn't think it mattered. 

It is the same as if you asked the agent 'have you ever messed around a tenant, ignored requests for repairs, held back bonds for spurious reasons, told someone a flat had gone because you just didn't like the look of them, failed to do inspections yet charged the landlord for them..'

The answer would be no to all, but I bet they have done them all in the past year !