Stoozing and mortgage application

hugheskevi

As a fairly common issue/question with Stoozing is how it might affect mortgage applications, so I thought it might be helpful to give my recent experience with a mortgage application (Yorkshire Building Society).

We planned to buy a new house in my wife's name only, and kept her Stoozing quite restrained (68% used/available and 28% borrowing/gross income, 2 Stoozing cards and 3 cards in total). An agreement in principle was given without question.

Our plans changed, and we are now purchasing jointly. My Stoozing was a bit more extensive as I wasn't expecting to apply for a mortgage (65% used/available, 41% borrowing/gross income, 5 stoozing cards, 6 cards in total). Together we have a bit over £50K borrowed on credit cards so I was a bit concerned that this would cause issues in the mortgage application.

We got a mortgage in principle approved without any issue, and a subsequent mortgage offer. There wasn't even any questioning about the credit card balance, I simply declared it, a hard credit check was done, and that was it. I assume it reduced the amount they were willing to offer, but we were still offered a bit over 4 x joint gross salary.

However, about 6 years ago Nationwide gave a flat rejection to a mortgage application. Stoozing was the only probable explanation for that (I didn't mind as I had a near identical offer from my existing mortgage provider that was just a bit less flexible).