Your payment profile is part of your application for finance

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has released figures reporting that the remortgage market had its best month for five months in April.  Gross lending was boosted by 5% from remortgage finance.  Signs that the low rates are attracting new customers and homeowners are keen to make use of the great deals currently around.

It was also good news for First Time Buyers.  46% of all house purchase loans advance in April were to those purchasing their first property.  The market is still incredibly tough, but these are signs that things are slowly improving.

With this in mind and so many rate changes and reductions, lenders will look closely at an individual’s recent payment profile, how many recent credit searches have been incurred by financial institutions and more.   So don’t give them any excuses not to lend to you!  The more credit searches you have on your profile, over a recent amount of time, the more likely your credit score will be lower as a result.  Try and ensure there’s no missed or late payments as these will also decrease your credit score.  In short, your credit search / score are the basis on which most lenders will initially decide whether to lend to you or not.  The best rates will almost definitely go to those with the best credit scores.  If you’ve not checked your credit file before, it is well worth a review.  Experian and Equifax tend to be the main two providers used in our market with both offering free initial trials and you can find links to these on the AToM website.

Finally, so you’ve done all the hard work and gone through the whole mortgage process with the lender providing you with a mortgage offer and you can now sit back and relax.  Wrong!  Although the mortgage offer has been issued, until you have completed on your new mortgage, the lender can still decline to proceed with their offering.   If you take out any finance, have lots of credit searches done or miss any payments before completion, it could be that the lender will re-credit score you before completion and uncover something that might not be to their liking.  If in doubt, seek advice.