Look at your own credit file before anybody else does. It costs nothing, it takes ten minutes, and the things it turns up are almost always fixable given a little notice and almost never fixable the week before completion.
First, the score is not the thing
The three-digit score the credit agencies show you is their own invention. Lenders do not see it and do not use it. They run your file through their own scorecard, weighted for what they care about, which is why the same file can score well at one lender and poorly at another.
What they are all reading is the underlying conduct: whether payments were made on time, how much of your available credit you use, how long accounts have been open, and whether anything serious has happened recently.
What is worth checking
- •Are you on the electoral roll at your current address? It is the most common easy fix, and registering can take a few weeks.
- •Are the addresses right? Old addresses that linger, or a spelling variant, can stop a lender’s system finding you.
- •Is there anything you do not recognise? An account you never opened, or a default from a utility bill at an address you left years ago.
- •Are any accounts still showing open that you thought you had closed? A dormant card with a large limit still reduces what some lenders will lend.
- •Is anything marked late that was not? Disputes take time to resolve, which is exactly why you want to find them early.
The things lenders weigh
Do not let anybody run a hard credit search “just to see”. An agreement in principle should be a soft search at almost every lender. If someone proposes a hard search before you have settled which lender the case is going to, ask why.
If something is wrong
You can raise a dispute with the credit reference agency, which has to investigate with the lender that reported it. You can also add a notice of correction — a short statement on your file explaining a particular item. It is worth knowing that a notice of correction stops automated decisioning at many lenders, so the case goes to a human. Sometimes that helps and sometimes it slows things down, so take advice before adding one.
Be wary of anybody offering to repair or clean your credit file for a fee. Accurate information cannot be removed, and there is nothing they can do that you cannot do yourself for nothing.