Wanting to move to a high street mortgage lender

Martin_from_London

My wife and myself have had severe financial problems for nine years.
We have managed to pay off our unsecured debt - over £30,000.
Due to our credit history (CCJs) our mortgage is with a sub prime lender.
The mortgage of £165,000 is interest only with a penal interest rate of LIBOR + 4.5% (around £1,300 per month).
This October our early redemption penalty will reduce from 6% to 1%.
We sill have a poor credit history due to a number of satisfied CCJs but are anxious to reduce our monthly outgoings and go with a main stream mortgage provider.
Has anyone got any suggestions please?

martinpike

All I can suggest is that, starting with the bank you have your current account with, you make an appointment with some.

That's a hell of a premium you're paying there, and you might be lucky and find someone who realises that if the extra interest were aimed at paying the capital instead, everyone would be a winner.

The only other suggestions would be to open a small credit card and use that to help repair your credit file.

Obviously the longer you are 'clean', the more chance you have of getting a good deal.

Iona_Penny

I think that is good advice. I also want to say that take any evidence you have of the sort of debt you were in and how you to show you paid the £30,000 ie: reducing balance statements and bank statements.

Show you now have a budget and how it breaks down ( and if you haven't got one then peruse this site and make one) and how you currently manage to pay the mortgage you have.ie take your mortgage statements. ( I took the notebook I had to the building society showing how I accounted for every penny out.)

You will not get immediate acceptance in a branch but if you make an impression higher approval can be sought. I have stated here before that oh and I remortgaged recently (to try to take up some endowment shortfall) even though I have a satisfied but visible CCJ on my credit file.

I also hope that you may have some equity in the house so the percentage to value you want to borrow will look better. I have no reason for saying this but I would try a smaller building society than a huge demutualised one.

fruityslh

When my DH and I first looked for a mortgage, he had some unfavourable credit history due to his previous partner (very long story) we managed to get a reasonable rate with the Skipton, we were tied into their insurance but compared to some other avaialbe lenders this wasn't too bad, like Iona said the smaller building societys seem to be a little more lenient and once you've got a good payment history with one of these lenders then the "bigger players" are more interested (we moved to Nationwide after our 2 year deal was up as Skipton wanted to keep us on the variable)

Good luck

Martin_from_London

Thank you all for your suggestions

Martinpike
Will take up your suggestion of opening a small credit card despite vowing never to go near them again!

Iona_Penny
Will try our bank for starters and have plenty of evidence on how we paid off our £30k of debts. Also the loan required is just under 80% of the value of the property which I guess will help our cause.

fruitylh
As our mortgage is with Amber (owned by Skipton) I think your suggestion of trying Skipton is excellant. Hopefully our existing relationship/history with Amber will count for something.

Iona_Penny

Good Luck and keep us posted with the outcome.