I didn’t ring on Monday. I spent a week researching bad credit mortgages instead.
This is a composite of conversations we have most weeks, written up as one story. Details have been changed. It is a personal account, not mortgage advice.
The short version, for anyone who does not want to read a week of my life. Missed payments stay on your credit file for six years, and the six years runs from the date the payment was missed, not from the date you cleared the balance. There is no single credit score: the three UK credit reference agencies each produce a different number, and lenders do not use any of them, they score you against their own rules. A missed payment is the mildest form of adverse credit there is, well below a default, a CCJ, an IVA or bankruptcy. And many of the lenders most likely to accept adverse credit do not deal with the public at all, only through brokers.
That last one is why a week of research got me exactly nowhere.
I didn’t ring on Monday.
I know. I said I would.
Here’s why.
Standing in that bank on the Thursday, when my banker started talking about my “conduct history”, I realised I didn’t properly understand a single thing that was happening to me. I just sat there nodding at a man I’ve known for 7 years while he explained, kindly, that I was a risk.
I wasn’t doing that again.
So instead of ringing anybody, I spent a week trying to understand what’s actually wrong with me on paper.
I’ve learned more in seven days than I did in seven years of banking with the same branch.
There isn’t one credit score
I signed up to check my file properly and got three different numbers from three different companies. Experian, Equifax, TransUnion. Three scores, all different, and one of them was nearly 200 points off another.
I’d been treating the number in that free app on my phone like it was my exam result.
Turns out lenders don’t even see it. They each have their own scoring system, run on their own rules, and my number is basically a rough guess sold back to me.
A week ago I’d have told you my score was my problem. It isn’t. It was never the thing.
Not all bad credit is the same bad credit
This one actually cheered me up.
There’s a hierarchy to it, and each step down is a bigger deal to a lender than the one above:
| How serious |
What it is |
| Mildest |
A late or missed payment on a credit agreement |
| More serious |
A default, where the lender closed the account as unpaid |
| Serious |
A County Court Judgment (CCJ) for an unpaid debt |
| Most serious |
A debt management plan, an IVA, or bankruptcy |
Mine are late payments. Two of them.
Which, in the grand scheme of what can be on a credit file, is about as mild as it gets.
I sat at the kitchen table reading that and felt genuinely furious for about ten minutes. Not sad. Furious. Because nobody in that branch had thought to say “for what it’s worth, this is the mildest version of this problem”. I’d walked out of there thinking I was radioactive.
How long do missed payments stay on your credit file?
Six years.
That’s the bit most people know, including me.
Here’s the bit I didn’t: the six years runs from when the payment was missed, not from when you paid it off.
I’d been quietly proud of clearing that card. Turns out clearing it didn’t restart anything, or reset anything, or wipe anything. It just meant the debt was gone. The record stayed exactly where it was, with the same expiry date it always had.
So my two missed payments from 2024 are on my file until 2030 whatever I do, and the only thing that changes between now and then is how much weight a lender puts on them. Which apparently drops off a lot faster than the six years suggests.
Nobody tells you that either.
The one website that actually helped
Somewhere around day three of reading adverts pretending to be articles, I found MoneyHelper.
It’s free and it’s impartial and it’s backed by the government, and I want to be clear about why that mattered so much to me: there was nothing on it trying to sell me anything.
After a week of “guaranteed approval” banners, reading something written by people with no commission riding on my decision felt like sitting down.
I read it for about two hours. I now know what adverse credit means, which is just the industry’s polite phrase for a blemish on your file. I know what loan to value means, and that my 10% deposit puts me at 90% LTV, and that this matters more than I’d realised. I know “specialist lender” isn’t a euphemism for loan shark.
For the first time since December I understood the words being used about me.
Where the research runs out
And then I hit the wall.
Because MoneyHelper explains how the system works. It’s guidance. What it can’t do, and it’s upfront about this, is tell me which specific lender will say yes to a bloke with a 10% deposit and two late payments from 2024.
Nothing free will tell you that. I’ve looked.
And I understand why now. Telling somebody which mortgage to apply for is regulated advice, and you can’t hand that out on a web page to a stranger whose circumstances you’ve never seen.
So a week of homework has left me here:
I understand the game.
I still can’t play it.
The lenders I need can’t be reached by me
Because the last thing I found is the bit that properly stopped me.
A lot of the lenders that deal with credit files like mine don’t sell to the public. You can’t walk into a branch, because there is no branch. You can’t apply on their website, because their website is for brokers. They’re what the industry calls intermediary only, which means the only door in is through somebody who is registered to use it.
I could research for another six months and I still wouldn’t be able to reach them.
Which is a strange feeling. I did all this reading to avoid needing anybody, and the reading is what proved I need somebody.
Does applying for a mortgage affect your credit score?
There’s one more thing I found out and I wish I hadn’t.
Those three applications I fired off in a panic the night I got declined? Each one left a hard search on my file, which is the record of a formal credit application, and other lenders can see them.
Three applications, three declines, three footprints, all in one evening.
Checking your own report doesn’t do this. Getting a quote usually doesn’t either, because that’s normally a soft search that only you can see. Applying does.
I was trying to fix it. I made it worse. I’d love to say I’d have known better, but I wouldn’t, because nobody had ever explained the difference.
The five questions I’ve written down
Anyway.
The envelope is still on the kitchen table. Her number’s still on the back of it.
But it’s covered in my handwriting now, because I’ve written down what I actually want to ask:
- How much damage did those three applications do, and how long until it stops mattering?
- Are two late payments from 2024 something a lender will overlook, or something I have to wait out?
- Is my 10% deposit enough for the sort of lender that would consider me, or do I need more?
- What does it cost me to find out?
- And the real one, the one I’ll probably ask badly: am I actually stuck, or have I just been knocking on the wrong door?
I’m ringing her tomorrow.
Part one: I was declined for a mortgage by the bank I had used for 7 years Part three: I rang the number on the envelope
