Bad credit mortgage broker

A wide range, because credit problems rarely look the same from one person to the next. We regularly arrange mortgages around missed or defaulted payments on credit cards, loans or a previous mortgage, County Court Judgements of varying size and age, debt management plans and individual voluntary arrangements, and past bankruptcy or repossession.

We also help where the issue is more modest, such as a missed payment on a mobile phone contract, which most lenders treat as far less significant than a defaulted mortgage or a serious CCJ.

Context changes everything here. A default caused by a one off event such as illness, job loss or a relationship breakdown, where your finances have since stabilised, is viewed very differently to a longer pattern of unpaid credit commitments. Being open with us about what happened, and what has changed since, is what allows us to find the right lender the first time.

Not at the stage that matters most. We begin with a soft credit search, which lets us see your position without leaving any mark that other lenders can see, and without affecting your score. This step exists because full applications carry risk if handled without guidance.

Every formal application generally triggers a hard credit search, and several hard searches in a short period can lower your score further and make you look like a higher risk to the next lender, even if each application was reasonable on its own.

By reviewing your position first and identifying the lender most likely to accept you, we aim to submit one well prepared application rather than several speculative ones. That single step is one of the most valuable things a specialist broker offers, and it is something you cannot easily replicate approaching lenders directly.

More than you would need with a clean credit history, though the figure depends heavily on what is on your file and how serious it is. A standard mortgage might ask for a deposit of 5% to 10%. With adverse credit, many specialist lenders start closer to 15%, and more serious or recent issues, such as an undischarged bankruptcy or a large recent CCJ, can push that requirement higher still.

The relationship works in your favour the other way too. A larger deposit reduces the lender’s exposure, which tends to widen your choice of lender and can improve the rate on offer even where credit issues remain on your file. If you can put down more than the minimum required, it is often the single most effective way to improve your options.

Remortgaging with bad credit is generally possible, though your choice of lender will usually be narrower than with a clean file. If your existing deal is ending, doing nothing means dropping onto your lender’s standard variable rate, typically higher than the deal you are leaving.

Some mainstream lenders decline a remortgage application outright once they see adverse credit on file, which is where a specialist bad credit mortgage broker becomes useful, since we can identify lenders set up to consider your circumstances rather than screen them out automatically.

Two things tend to work in your favour at remortgage stage. The first is time, since older, resolved credit issues carry progressively less weight. The second is equity, because more equity in your property lowers the lender’s risk and can open up options unavailable when you first bought.

Generally yes, and it is worth understanding why before you commit to anything. Lenders price adverse credit mortgages to reflect the higher risk they are taking on, which usually means a higher interest rate, a larger deposit requirement, and sometimes higher arrangement fees than a mainstream product would carry.

How much more expensive depends on the specifics. A single, minor, well aged issue might attract only a modest premium over a standard rate. Multiple recent defaults, an active debt management plan or a recent bankruptcy will typically see a more noticeable difference. This is where a broker earns their fee. Rather than accepting the first offer out of relief that something was approved, we compare the specialist lenders whose criteria fit your circumstances and find the most competitive terms actually available, then explain honestly what is driving the cost.

Less than you might expect, and nothing you need to prepare perfectly before the first conversation. We will want to understand your deposit and where it has come from, your income and any regular outgoings, and the nature of the credit issue itself, including roughly when it occurred and whether it has been resolved.

If you already have a copy of your credit report, bringing it along speeds things up, though it is not essential, since our soft search will usually surface the same information.

Being candid about what led to the credit issue is genuinely the most useful thing you can bring. Lenders in this part of the market make manual decisions based on the full picture, and an underwriter who understands that a default followed a specific, resolved event is far more likely to look favourably on an application than one presented with no context at all.