This story is a little different to many of our stories. It is different because it is an application we did not submit…
At Mortgage Success we tend to specialise in helping people who have bad credit. This means we have other brokers who refer customers to us. It also means we spend time in meetings with the specialist lenders. In this meetings we also meet other brokers who do a lot in the adverse world and so what you tend to find is that the adverse brokers are actually quite closely knit.
This case is an example of where everyone worked together to get the end result.
The situation
A broker who regularly puts customers they are unable to help in touch with us did the same with the customers on this case.
The customer had been unable to work due to their boss being ill – which in itself is quite a quirky one. As it was not their health causing the problem or anything relating to them. This had resulted in the customer being unable to pay their mortgage. They did speak to their current lender and kept them in the loop with the situation and an agreement was set up to pay the interest each month.
However, their current lender did not tell this would affect their credit report.
2 years down the line and the customers decided to downsize as they had struggled to catch up on their bills. They were still unaware at this point their mortgage was still in arrears as they thought it had all been done by agreement. The original broker discovered the problem and put them in touch with us.
What we did
We did what we always do, we went through their credit report discovered that everything else was paid on time. It transpired that the customers thought it would be better to go interest only with agreement from their lender rather than defaulting on their credit cards.
Unfortunately it had the opposite effect. We did a LOT of ringing around as we really wanted to help them. They were unaware of the bad credit, they thought they did what was best and the original cause was not even due to their “issues”, it was their employer.
After 2 weeks of trying we eventually found a lender, but we were unable to submit the application to them. This particular lender since covid only really works with a handful of brokers and we are not currently on that list.
However, as our particular part of the market is closely knit, we were able to put them in touch with a broker who were on the list.
The outcome
The other broker did their research. They came to the same conclusion as us in that this was likely the only lender for them.
The application went in and 6 weeks later the customer has completed and are now in their new home. Their debts are all paid off and they are no ongoing negative markers. In around 2 years time, I think we will be able to get them a very close to normal rate. Probably not high street rates as the mortgage arrears will still be recent. I am confident a little building society will sit down and see what happened with a view to accepting them.