The Importance of being upfront with any problems.

Be upfront with your broker if you have any credit issues - they'll know how to treat it.

Stuff happens.

We don’t like it & often it’s not our intention.

If that ‘stuff’ impacts your credit file its very important to be upfront about it, lenders appreciate that, and they will find out so tell us. If you’re honest and you give all the mitigating reasons, and show what you’ve done since then you may still not get the new loan want but you have a much better chance than if you don’t, and you aren’t wasting your time. This also gives us the opportunity to workshop it with lenders and see who’s most likely to approve you, which protects your credit history.

What is absolutely critical is that you show good faith in dealing with credit hiccups - do not put your head in the sand. Lenders can see when the date of any listing, when your file was accessed after this, and when you got around to fixing it up. If you’ve ignored a default and they can see you knew about it looks bad. If they can see that promptly act as soon as you know about it, either paying the credit or disputing the bill (and documenting everything you do to dispute it), that’s better.

Mitigating reasons may be relationship breakdown, or illness, change of address; whatever it is back it up with your documents.

Unfortunately many utilities and phone companies are a little quick to list you lately so we are seeing a few where final bills have genuinely not been received and these listings we can often challenge by asking them to prove they’ve followed the right process.

The introduction of positive credit reporting in the last couple of years means lenders now report when you always pay on time, when you often pay a day or so late, when you pay later than this, and of course when you don’t pay at all.

So if you have a poor history this now works in your favour and shows that you’re usually a good egg. And if you are more likely to make late payments then you now have something to worry about.

And if you do have an issue expect to pay a little more for your loan, and perhaps to have to put a little more deposit in.