Mortgage lender being picky about credit card balance

JWalterWeatherman

Hi,

We have an application with NatWest via a broker, and they're being weird about my credit card showing any balance on it at all.

I use the credit card for things like online purchases and our weekly groceries, but the bill is always paid off, in full, at pay day. But of course this means it rarely, if ever, shows a £0 balance. That's apparently what they want to see.

It's irritating me slightly as it's very obvious that we're not in debt, and getting it to actually show £0 is going to be difficult because some other automatic payment will likely go onto the card immediately.

Anyone have any similar experiences?

ACG

Change the balance to whatever the average balance is during the month. Then advise them it will be cleared prior to completion. You can get a statement closer to completion showing it has been cleared in full. 

Alternatively, does it pass affordability with the credit card balance at its highest in the last 3 months? If it does, you could change the balance and not advise it will be cleared off. 

Are you using a broker or doing it direct? If via a broker, I would expect them to have sorted this out for you. 

MWT

JWalterWeatherman said:

We have an application with NatWest via a broker, and they're being weird about my credit card showing any balance on it at all.

What did you tell your broker about the balance on the card?

If you said zero, because you were paying it in full, without mentioning to the broker that it was a card you were using but clearing, it may have gone onto your application at zero.

... but the broker should have raised a question with you on this based on your credit report...

Similarly if affordability was an issue the broker should have been talking to you about that anyway...

Does seems odd...

JWalterWeatherman

Yeah, told our broker at the start about the way we use our credit card, and again when my credit report showed the balance. Not sure how he explained it to the lender.

The balance is never above £1k anyway, so the minimum payment on each bill is always small. The debt-to-income would be about 20% even if I was only paying off the minimum.

It's very weird.

DullGreyGuy

Welcome to affordability calculations.

We had similar with our Natwest Mortgage though it was across a couple of different cards used for different purposes. They decided they wanted to see a £0 balance on the AmEx card, even though its a Chargecard so has to be paid off in full every month anyway but was simple enough to pay it off and then screenshot the £0 balance which the lender accepted.

onemouseplace

How odd - we took out a Natwest mortgage last year via a broker and use our credit cards in exactly the same way - always pay off in full every month but never actually show a £0 balance due to the lag between statement and payment date.

No questions whatsover about our credit cards or spending on those - they only wanted to see our current account statements and would have seen the monthly payments go out on there, but I did think it was slightly strange that they didn't want to see our credit card statements which have the vast majority of our discretionary spending on.  

JMA74

Never come across this before.  I always just key the balance as it is showing on the last statement and then say it will be cleared. 
. Possibly a case of the broker keying that it has a £0 balance and lender can only see the balance on the credit report and statement.