If your credit history reveals bad debt, obtaining a mortgage at a low, competitive rate can be a problem. Fortunately, there are solutions if you are looking for debt loans such as adverse credit mortgages or ccjs remortgage.

It is likely that you will get more success finding remortgages or mortgages for bad credit by going to a mortgage broker rather than to a high street lender. Even if you have been turned down by other lenders or offered very uncompetitive quotes, a broker is most likely to be able to come up with a mortgage solution.

A broker can look at your personal situation in detail, whether you have secured loans, unsecured loans, debt consolidation loans, are self-employed with irregular income, have a commission-based salary and many other scenarios.

It is important to provide lenders or brokers you approach with as much information as possible about your financial situation, such as earnings and outgoings, so that you are offered a mortgage that you can comfortably afford. If you are buying rather than remortgaging bear in mind costs of buying, such as legal fees and stamp duty.

You will improve your chances of obtaining a competitive mortgage the more the lender can see that lending to you is an acceptable risk for them, for example by keeping up with loan and credit card payments as much as possible and improving your credit rating, paying as large a deposit as possible on the property, and, if a remortgage, having as much equity in the home as possible.  

Lending criteria has changed greatly in recent years and whereas in the past a lender may have principally focused on multiples of salary to ascertain how much it was prepared to lend, today it can build up a far more complex picture to decide whether the mortgage products it offers will be affordable.

If a lender or broker turns down your application it is worth shopping around as each lender and broker may have different lending criteria.

By Ben West