I noticed on a lenders website earlier in the month they were labelling some of their mortgages which we have applied for in the past as Credit repair mortgages. Lets have a look into them and see what they are all about…
What is a credit repair mortgage?
As I mentioned above, we have applied for many of these products over the years. However it never quite occurred to me that they were labelled as credit repair.
In a nutshell credit repair mortgages are very similar to (if not the same as) specialist mortgages, sub prime or bad credit mortgages. They are mortgages that are geared towards people who have bad credit.
However, unlike some bad credit or sub prime mortgages they are not usually geared towards ongoing on recent adverse. They are usually for people that can show the bad credit is behind them, so that would normally mean no adverse in the last 6-12 months, but beyond that things like Defaults, Bankruptcy and CCJs etc can be considered.
Can a credit repair mortgage help repair my credit score?
A credit repair mortgage works like any other mortgage. The credit repair mortgage in itself will not repair your score or your credit history. However, it can help. I can bang on about how pointless credit scores are but this is not the place for it.
One of the biggest factors when looking to improve your credit score is time. Credit repair mortgages give you that time. Lets assume you picked up 3 defaults 12 months ago. Lets also assume you apply for a 2 year fixed rate credit repair mortgages. Add in the time for making the application and the legal work, by the time your mortgage comes to an end your adverse will be over 3 years old.
At 3 years old, adverse starts to be seen as historic. Your credit score should have jumped up considerably in those 2 years (assuming you have not picked up anymore adverse).
A credit repair mortgage will not increase your credit score any differently to any other mortgage, but it will allow you to evidence mortgage payments being made on your credit report and it will buy you time, those 2 things will help in the same way any other mortgage will.
Can I get a credit repair mortgage?
This really depends on your circumstances. Having bad credit in itself is nota barrier, they are geared towards people with bad credit. But you still need to pass criteria, the acceptance is usually criteria driven rather than credit score driven so usually we can give you a very good indication upfront if you are likely to be accepted and on what terms.
However even if not, we do have other specialist lenders and products available to us who can accept a little more recent or severe adverse than the credit repair products out there.
Summary
If you would like to discuss your options, whether that be credit repair or more severe bad credit do please get in touch. You can see examples of past clients we have been able to help. It would be great if we could help you to obtain your own success story. We only publish those stories with permission from the client.
Please get in touch, we always try to be open and upfront. We will do our best to give you an idea of rates and fees on the first call.