Is it Difficult to Get a Mortgage in the UK If You Have A Poor Credit Record?
There are a lot of people who will face difficulty with their credit during some point in their life. In fact, just last year, mortgages for people with a bad credit history accounted for over 14% of all UK home loans. This proportion gets higher every year.
There are several different reasons people may get a less than favorable credit rating. Commonly, the person is a victim of bad luck. Common circumstances may be Redundancy, Bereavement, Sickness, Divorce or Bankruptcy. Any of these factors could cause people to fall behind on their house payments.
Basic indicators that you have a bad credit history are: You've filed for bankruptcy. You have entered into debt agreement. You have one or more court judgements filed against you. You've been behind with a previous home or other loan.
Until recently, having unfavorable credit could greatly restrict your liklihood for getting a home loan. The chances were that you would have to speak with a professional mortgage lender with a much higher interest rate than average borrowers.
But Mortgage Lenders in the UK are becoming more open-minded to people with a less than perfect credit rating. They are much more interested than before in finding those who are normally dependable borrowers but have been through a little bad luck. Many standard lenders now offer home loans for people with not so perfect credit.
In the last few years, the range of "credit repair" and "adverse credit history" UK mortgage agreements from building societies and mainstream banks has grown substantially. This added competition can mean that deals being offered to bad credit borrowers are better. You will find lower interest rates and terms that are more welcoming. The advantages when doing business with these types of lenders (typically building societies) is that they often offer you the opportunity to eventually swith to one of their best rates in about three years - as long as you have kept current with your payments.
In fact, people with only marginally adverse credit ratings will realize that the rates they have been offered are less than 1% over the lender's usual variable rate. Sometimes they qualify for the exact same uk mortgage deals being offered to mainstream borrowers.
For those with terrible credit, what will usually happen is, the worse the credit score is, the higher the interest rate gets. At the top end of the scale, newly discharged bankruptcies along with more serious credit problems may see rates up to 11%. But these don't pertain to the majority of borrowers, so don't let that discourage you.
If you have a really poor credit record, one thing you can do to change things around is make regular payments on any financial purchase. The mortgage lenders need to see regular persistent payments. It's not the amounts. It is the consistency that really matters. In addition to a constant income, this will really help better your credit score. These two things are the key ways that those who have excellent credit ratings got those ratings.
Mainstream borrowers can now anticipate and expect a wide choice of UK mortgage deals: tracker mortgages, fixed mortgages, variable mortgages – the list doesn't stop there. The good news is that most of these are now made available with poor credit rating mortgages too. The majority of lenders that deal with poor credit cases are now providing equivalent choices to those available in the mainstream mortgage market. Three year fixed rate mortgages are becoming really popular due to the security. Even if rates get higher, payments on a fixed mortgage don't change month to month.
To find the best deal on a mortgage, it pays off to get some advice from the professionals when considering a credit mortgage or remortgage. You should seek advice from a bad credit mortgage specialist, who is able to study a very large selection of home mortgages for you. Do your homework to discover one that suits you. As long as you've got your finances in order now and you have met all the legal responsiblities on your previous debts, you have got an even chance to get a home mortgage.
Authors biog:
Brian Harbinson regularly contributes to Http://www.MortgageSorter.co.uk, a UK website that specialises in everything you wanted to know about UK mortgages but were afraid to ask