Were you late settling your credit card account in May 2007 or September 2009?   Have you ever defaulted on anything from a hire purchase agreement to a catalogue club payment?  It's all on record....!  Where?  In our credit file.

Whether we like it or not each one of us over the age of 18 has a credit file.  On this is recorded not only major financial matters such as bankruptcies, and court judgments, but such information as where we have lived for the past seven years at least, details of most  credit or store cards we have applied for, our mortgage details and considerable other information concerning  our financial circumstances.  In particular our credit file confirms whether we have made  our repayments regularly and how much total credit we have outstanding.

When we apply for a mortgage or remortgage, even before matters such as our available income, type of property, size of mortgage we want are considered, the lender will search at the credit reference agency they use, and in many cases if anything untoward whatever is thrown up, our application will be declined.  Some lenders will decline to proceed if we have literally missed just one credit card payment date or been late with our mortgage installment at any time.  Many will automatically decline if a default has been registered in our name.  County court judgments and arrears on a previous mortgage are also causes of a turn down. (You can find more information on the terms highlighted in this section under 'can I still get a mortgage with a poor status record? '

If you are in any doubt at all about your status position it is often a good idea for you to get a copy of your own credit file before making a mortgage application, for then you will be able to see exactly the same information which the lenders see when they search your file.  There are two main agencies which are used by the lenders so it may be worth getting file copies from both of them, as the information they contain may vary slightly.  You can send for a copy of your credit file by post, but the easier way is to obtain this on line at either www.experian.co.uk or www.equifax.co.uk .You can often get your credit file for 'free'  Please follow the link to Experian on our website.

There are, of course, lenders who will accept mortgage applications with what they call minor blemishes on normal terms.  Other lenders will accept slightly more problem situations whilst still other mortgage providers have been set up specifically to deal with adverse status situations(but only if the borrowing requirement is very low compared to the property value). There is no doubt, however, that the influence of the 'credit crunch ' has made it very much more difficult to obtain a mortgage or remortgage at the moment if you have status problems, defaults, mortgage arrears, county court judgements etc.

We repeat - because we have all the terms of all the lenders at our finger tips - CONTACT US NOW .